George Burns

I look to the future because that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life.
- George Burns

Leo Tolstoy

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.
- Leo Tolstoy

Ernest Hemingway

I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?
- Ernest Hemingway

Lao Tzu

The sage seeks freedom from desire. He does not collect precious things. He learns not to hold on to ideas. He brings men back to what they have lost.
- Lao Tzu

C. S. Lewis

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
- C. S. Lewis

Socrates

The shortest and surest way to live with honour in the world, is to be in reality what we would appear to be; and if we observe, we shall find, that all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice of them.
- Socrates

James Clerk Maxwell

It was a great step in science when men became convinced that, in order to understand the nature of things, they must begin by asking, not whether a thing is good or bad, noxious or beneficial, but of what kind it is? And how much is there of it? Quality and Quantity were then first recognised as the primary features to be observed in scientific inquiry.
- James Clerk Maxwell

Robert Lynd

There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before.
- Robert Lynd

Tao Te Ching

He who rushes ahead doesn't go far.
- Tao Te Ching

Confucius

If we don't know life, how can we know death?
- Confucius

Olivia Ross

“Homework is continuous, but my brain is discrete.”
- Olivia Ross (2007)

Cato the Elder

After Im dead Id rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one. - Cato the Elder

Mason Cooley

“Travelers never think that THEY are the foreigners.”
- Mason Cooley

Katherine Mansfield

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.
- Katherine Mansfield

Marsha (Rear Admiral) Evans

Working hard overcomes a who lot of other obstacles. You can have unbelievable intelligence, you can have connections, you can have opportunities fall out of the sky. But in the end, hard work is the true, enduring characteristic of successful people.
- Marsha (Rear Admiral) Evans

Peter Sellers

"There used to be a real me, but I had it surgically removed."
- Peter Sellers

Isaac Asimov

"It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety."
- Isaac Asimov

Augusten Burroughs

"I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions."
- Augusten Burroughs

James Branch Cabell

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
- James Branch Cabell

Martin Luther King Jr.

"Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step."
- Martin Luther King Jr.

Mitch Hedberg

I wanted to buy a candle holder, but the store didn't have one. So I got a cake.
- Mitch Hedberg

Thomas Edison

They say President Wilson has blundered. Perhaps he has, but I notice he usually blunders forward.
- Thomas Edison

Thomas Jefferson

“You have not been mistaken in supposing my views and feeling to be in favor of the abolition of war. Of my dispos[i]tion to maintain peace until its condition shall be made less tolerable than that of war itself, the world has had proofs, and more, perhaps, than it has approved. I hope it is practicable, by improving the mind and morals of society, to lessen the dispos[i]tion to war; but of its abolition I despair. ”- Thomas Jefferson (1817)

Richard Bach

Within each of us lies the power of our consent to health and sickness, to riches and poverty, to freedom and to slavery. It is we who control these, and not another.
- Richard Bach

Jane Austen

Nothing amuses me more than the easy manner with which everybody settles the abundance of those who have a great deal less than themselves.
- Jane Austen

Albert Einstein

"Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever."
- Albert Einstein

Henry David Thoreau

"Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes."
- Henry David Thoreau

Seneca

“Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.”
- Seneca

Carl Sagan

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.
- Carl Sagan

Buddha

A dog is not considered a good dog because he is a good barker. A man is not considered a good man because he is a good talker. - Buddha

Mark Twain

The joy of killing! the joy of seeing killing done--these are traits of the human race at large. We white people are merely modified Thugs; Thugs fretting under the restraints of a not very thick skin of civilization; Thugs who long ago enjoyed the slaughter of the Roman arena, and later the burning of doubtful Christians by authentic Christians in the public squares, and who now, with the Thugs of Spain and Nimes, flock to enjoy the blood and misery of the bull-ring. We have no tourists of either sex or any religion who are able to resist the delights of the bull-ring when opportunity offers; and we are gentle Thugs in the hunting-season, and love to chase a tame rabbit and kill it. Still, we have made some progress--microscopic, and in truth scarcely worth mentioning, and certainly nothing to be proud of--still it is progress: we no longer take pleasure in slaughtering or burning helpless men. We have reached a little altitude where we may look down upon the Indian Thugs with a complacent shudder; and we may even hope for a day, many centuries hence, when our posterity will look down upon us in the same way.
- Mark Twain