Mathematics is not a book confined within a cover and bound between brazen clasps, whose contents it need only patience to ransack; it is not a mine, whose treasures may take long to reduce to possessions, but which fill only a limited number of vein...
My Creed I do not choose to be a common man, It is my right to be uncommon … if I can, I seek opportunity … not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen. Humbled and dulled by having the State look after me. I want to take the calculated risk...
As I see it the world is undoubtedly in need of a new religion, and that religion must be founded on humanist principles. When I say religion, I do not mean merely a theology involving belief in a supernatural god or gods; nor do I mean merely a syst...
Marshal Biggs: This is hinky, this guy's a college graduate, he went to medical school, he's not gonna come through all the security, go to the county lockup, to find someone his one people say does not exist. Hinky. Deputy Marshal Samuel Gerard: Wel...
[last lines] John Smith: Usually I'm quoting someone else's words. The least I can do is give you some John Smith originals. They won't be poetic. But they'll be the truth. Yes, prison desensitizes you. But it also forces you to see what's most impor...
James Reston, Jr.: You know the first and greatest sin of the deception of television is that it simplifies; it diminishes great, complex ideas, stretches of time; whole careers become reduced to a single snapshot. At first I couldn't understand why ...
[last lines] [spoiler] Alexander Kerner: [voiceover] My mother outlived the GDR by three days. I believe it was a good thing she never learned the truth. She died happy. She wanted us to scatter her ashes to the winds. That's prohibited in Germany, b...
William Ginter Riva: Mr. Stane. Sir, we've explored what you've asked us and it seems as though there's a little hiccup. Actually, um... Obadiah Stane: A hiccup? William Ginter Riva: Yes, to power the suit... sir, the technology doesn't actually exis...
Ephraim: We have 11 Palestinian names. Each had a hand in planning Munich. You're going to kill them, 11 men, one by one. They're all in Europe now. You'll stay there as long as it takes. Europe only, not the Arab countries. That's for us, not you. A...
Man on the Train: Hey, are you a dreamer? Wiley: Yeah. Man on the Train: I haven't seen too many around lately. Things have been tough lately for dreamers. They say dreaming is dead, no one does it anymore. It's not dead it's just that it's been forg...
There's a psychological mechanism, I've come to believe, that prevents most of us from imagining the moment of our own death. For if it were possible to imagine fully that instant of passing from consciousness to nonexistence, with all the attendant ...
Rising demand for oil exposed Europe, and later America, to oil shocks - serious interruptions in supply. Like a pebble tossed into a pond, an oil shock creats ripples, or effects, felt everywhere. Oil shocks have two causes. The first is natural, be...
I knew I was a grain of sand in the vast desert that never ended and he was a sparkling star in the sky. I was a fish who couldn’t breathe in air and had to stay in dark waters forever while he was a majestic bird who soared so high that he barely ...
We do not know what our chances of survival are, so we fight as if they were zero. We do not know what we are facing, so we fight as if it was the dark gods themselves. No one will remember us now and we may never be buried beneath Titan, so we will ...
These are illusions of popular history which successful religion must promote: Evil men never prosper; only the brave deserve the fair; honesty is the best policy; actions speak louder than words; virtue always triumpths; a good deed is its own rewar...
What you of the CHOAM directorate seem unable to understand is that you seldom find real loyalties in commerce ... Men must want to do things of their own innermost drives. People, not commercial organisations or chains of command, are what make grea...
Simon hated her for that. Perhaps it was automatic. Her appearance alone made her different from him, and human beings had always feared and hated anyone who was different. Two thousand years of history saw it being repeated over and over, the perpet...
So what should we do with our last few days?” “I just want to spend every possible minute of the rest of my life with you,” Peete replies. “Come on, then,” I say, pulling him into my room. It feels like a luxury, sleeping with Peeta again. ...
Lying is essential to humanity. It plays as large a part perhaps as the quest for pleasure, and is moreover governed by that quest. One lies in order to protect one's pleasure, or one's honour if the disclosure of one's pleasure runs counter to one's...
It is almost impossible to express the extraordinary silence that came over everyone whose eyes were fixed on the painting––not a rustle, not a sound; and the painting meanwhile appeared loftier and loftier with every minute; brightly and wonderf...
Women intrinsically understand human dynamics, and that makes them unstoppable. Unfortunately, the average man is less adroit at fostering such rivalries, which is why most men remain average; males are better at hating things that can't hate them ba...
