It has often been observed, that those who have the most time at their disposal profit by it the least. A single hour a day, steadily given to the study of some interesting subject, brings unexpected accumulations of knowledge.
-William Ellery Channing
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices – just recognize them.
-Edward R. Murrow
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were, for the moment, unpopular.
-Edward R. Murrow, See It Now (1954)
Nothing is as real as a dream. The world can change around you, but your dream will not. Responsibilities need not erase it. Duties need not obscure it. Because the dream is within you, no one can take it away.
-Tom Clancy
Socrates famously said that the unconsidered life is not worth living. He meant that a life lived without forethought or principle is a life so vulnerable to chance, and so dependent on the choices and actions of others, that it is of little real value to the person living it. He further meant that a life well lived is one which has goals, and integrity, which is chosen and directed by the one who lives it, to the fullest extent possible to a human agent caught in the webs of society and history.
-A. C. (Anthony Clifford) Grayling, The Meaning of Things
There is no necessary connection between the desire to lead and the ability to lead, and even less the ability to lead somewhere that will be to the advantage of the led…
-Bergen Evans
Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.
-Henry Kissinger
I can’t make head or tail of Life. Love is a fine thing, Art is a fine thing, Nature is a fine thing; but the average human mind and spirit are confusing beyond measure.
-Wallace Stevens
A mind enclosed in language is in prison.
-Simone Weil, Human Personality [1943]
The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and “mangled mind” leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.
-Elizabeth Drew, Poetry: A Modern Guide to Its Understanding and Enjoyment [1959]
