"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great ones make you feel that you too, can become great."
Mark Twain
"History has shown us all too often the consequences of dreaming poorly or not at all."
Jeff VanderMeer
"All power, even the most despotic, rests ultimately on opinion."
David Hume
"The stones that critics hurl with harsh intent, a man may use to build a monument."
Arthur Guiterman
"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable."
Sydney J. Harris
"A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking."
Steven Wright
"No man [should] be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor [should he] be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor ... otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief... All men [should] be free to profess and by argument to maintain their opinions in matters of religion, and ... the same [should] in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."
Thomas Jefferson
"A movement to resist tyranny demands a leader and no leader determined to resist tyranny and to rally freedom-loving Americans has appeared anywhere on the horizon. I also know that power corrupts and many a rebellion against tyranny, having won the victory, has merely resulted in replacing the old brand of tyranny with a new brand. Indeed, never in history has there been a band of patriots like the Founding Fathers, men who in the name of liberty defeated a tyrant and then resisted the temptation to seize power for themselves. The chances that such a band or such a man as George Washington can again emerge to lead a new American Revolution and build a new nation dedicated to the principles of liberty and equality as God-given rights are pretty small."
Lyn Nofziger
"...how easy it was to present an appearance of orthodoxy while having no grasp whatever of what orthodoxy meant....the world view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane...."
George Orwell, "1984"
"A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government."
George Washington