Fervor is the weapon of choice for the impotent.
—Frantz Fanon
Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it.
—Horace Mann
It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.
—Mahatma Gandhi
The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent to the concerns of such puny creatures as we are.
—Carl Sagan in Cosmos
People who have no weaknesses are terrible; there is no way of taking advantage of them.
—Anatole France
It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.
—David Brin
A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt
I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.
—Solomon Short
We are never so defensless against suffering as when we love.
—Sigmund Freud
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
—Anne Frank
It takes so little to change everything. If you really thought about it, it would scare you to death.
—Sarah Dessen in The Moon and More
Don’t do it. Don’t go to that job you hate. Do something you love today. Ride a roller coaster. Swim in the ocean. Go to the airport and get on the next flight to anywhere just for the fun of it. Maybe stop a spinning globe with your finger and then plan a trip to that very spot; even if it’s in the middle of the ocean you can go by boat. Eat some type of ethnic food you’ve never even heard of. Stop a stranger and ask her to explain her greatest fears and her secret hopes and aspirations in detail and then tell her you care because she is a human being. Sit down on the sidewalk and make pictures with colorful chalk. Close your eyes and try to see the world with your nose—allow smells to be your vision. Catch up on your sleep. Call an old friend you haven’t seen in years. Roll up your pant legs and walk into the sea. See a foreign film. Feed squirrels. Do anything! Something! Because you start a revolution one decision at a time, with each breath you take. Just don’t go back to that miserable place you go every day.
—Matthew Quick in Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock
Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness, and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions.
—Frantz Fanon
With words we govern men.
—Benjamin Disraeli
In the fight between you and the world, back the world.
—Frank Zappa