The great majority of us are required to live a life of constant duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike, and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune. ~Boris Pasternak

Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be, because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget the pose, and then where are you? ~Fanny Brice

I think we risk becoming the best informed society that has ever died of ignorance. ~Reuben Blades

The first gold star a child gets in school for the mere performance of a needful task is its first lesson in graft. ~Philip Wylie, Generation of Vipers, 1942

Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams. ~Mary Ellen Kelly

Pharmaceutical companies will soon rule the world if we keep letting them believe that we are a happy, functional society so long as all the women are on Prozac, all children on Ritalin, and all men on Viagra. ~Terri Guillemets

Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them. ~Bill Vaughn

Widespread caffeine use explains a lot about the twentieth century. ~Greg Egan, "Distress"

We have produced a world of contented bodies and discontented minds. ~Adam Clayton Powell, Keep the Faith, Baby!, 1967

Nothing can be more readily disproved than the old saw, "You can't keep a good man down." Most human societies have been beautifully organized to keep good men down. ~John W. Gardner

One of the definitions of sanity is the ability to tell real from unreal. Soon we'll need a new definition. ~Alvin Toffler

The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded. ~Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

I've been reading a lot lately about Indian captives. One woman who had been captured by the Indians and made a squaw was resentful when she was rescued because she'd found that there was a lot more work to do as the wife of a white man. ~Stephen Vincent Benét

It is perfectly easy to be original by violating the laws of decency and the canons of good taste. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Over the Teacups, 1891

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"Civilization is unbearable, but it is less unbearable at the top."
-Timothy Leary

"For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: 'It might have been!'"
-John Greenleaf Whittier

"Death is the only inescapable, unavoidable, sure thing. We are sentenced to die the day we're born."
-Gary Mark Gilmore

"We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him? Here every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence."
-Joseph Roux

"If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved."
-Kahlil Gibran

"A solitary, unused to speaking of what he sees and feels, has mental experiences which are at once more intense and less articulate than those of a gregarious man."
-Thomas Mann

"A wise man is superior to any insults which can be put upon him, and the best reply to unseemly behavior is patience and moderation."
-Moliére

"Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself."
-Harvey Fierstein

"Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity."
-Christopher Morely

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect."
-Mark Twain (Samuel Clemmens)

"The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says: 'It's a girl.'"
-Shirley Chrisholm

"We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world."
-Buddha

"It is much more secure to be feared than to be loved."
-Niccolo Machiavelli

"If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country."
-E.M. Forster

"Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats."
-Howard Aiken

"The tears that you spill, the sorrowful, are sweeter than the laughter of snobs and the guffaws of scoffers."
-Kahlil Gibran

"Reality is wrong. Dreams are for real."
-Tupac Shakur

"You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you."
-Eric Hoffer

"I wish they would only take me as I am."
-Vincent Van Gogh

"Never assume, for it makes an ASS out of U and ME."
-Anon