There are stars whose radiance is visible on Earth though they have long been extinct. There are people whose brilliance continues to light the world though they are no longer among the living. These lights are particularly bright when the night is dark. They light the way for humankind.
-Hannah Senesh, poet, playwright, and paratrooper (17 Jul 1921-1944)
We are healed of a suffering only by expressing it to the full.
-Marcel Proust, novelist (10 Jul 1871-1922)
I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy ... censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything -- you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.
-Robert A. Heinlein, science-fiction author (7 Jul 1907-1988)
It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard.
-Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, scientist and philosopher (1 Jul 1742-1799)
And the fox said to the little prince: men have forgotten this truth, but you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author and aviator (29 Jun 1900-1944)
Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.
-Pearl S. Buck, Nobelist novelist (26 Jun 1892-1973)
An error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.
-Orlando Aloysius Battista, chemist and author (20 Jun 1917-1995)
Having been unable to strengthen justice, we have justified strength.
-Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (19 Jun 1623-1662)
The [Nobel] prize is such an extraordinary honor. It might seem unfair, however, to reward a person for having so much pleasure over the years, asking the maize plant to solve specific problems and then watching its responses.
-Barbara McClintock, scientist, Nobel laureate (16 Jun 1902-1992)
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
-Anne Frank, Holocaust diarist (12 Jun 1929-1945)
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
-Saul Bellow, writer, Nobel laureate (10 Jun 1915-2005)
Ethics, decency, and morality are the real soldiers.
-Kiran Bedi, police officer and social activist (b. 9 Jun 1949)
If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you've got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference.
-Robert Fulghum, author (b. 4 Jun 1937)
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
-William Pitt, British prime minister (28 May 1759-1806)
Compassion is not weakness and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.
-Hubert Humphrey, US Vice President (27 May 1911-1978)
What’s madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
-Theodore Roethke, poet (25 May 1908-1963)
A house is no home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.
-Margaret Fuller, author, critic, and women's rights advocate (23 May 1810-1850)
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
-Arthur Conan Doyle, physician and writer (22 May 1859-1930)
A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
-Alexander Pope, poet (21 May 1688-1744)
The past is never where you think you left it.
-Katherine Anne Porter, writer and activist (15 May 1890-1980)
