Maya Angelou

 You are the sum total of everything you've ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot - it's all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.  

- Maya Angelou

Mikhail Baryshnikov

 I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself. 

- Mikhail Baryshnikov

Twyla Tharp

 Art is the only way to run away without leaving home. 

- Twyla Tharp

Billy Connolly

 My definition of an intellectual is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger. 

- Billy Connolly

Albert Einstein

 Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen. 

- Albert Einstein

George Carlin

 Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac? 

- George Carlin

Mahatma Gandhi

 An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind. 

- Mahatma Gandhi

H. L. Mencken

 I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.

- H. L. Mencken

Miguel de Cervantes

 Our greatest foes, and whom we must chiefly combat, are within. 

- Miguel de Cervantes

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

 A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials. 

- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Mark Twain

 I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

- Mark Twain

Albert Schweitzer

 As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins. 

- Albert Schweitzer

Clarence Darrow

 Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt. 

- Clarence Darrow

Michael Caine

 I am a great admirer of other actors, but I never compete with other actors. I always compete with what I did last, and I'm my own most vicious critic. So I'm always trying to do it better. 

- Michael Caine

Thomas Jefferson

 I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend. 

- Thomas Jefferson