“I am not proud, but I am happy; and happiness blinds, I think, more than pride.” Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“The greatest power of bureaucracies is to make the smart act stupid and the good to act evil.” Raul Ramos y Sanchez, Pancho Land

“Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.” Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“You won't understand this now, Saira. Later, perhaps. When you are older. When you learn that life is not only about the choices you make. That some of them will be made for you.” Nafisa Haji, The Writing

“Our minds are information vacuums. Either we fill them with thoughts of our choosing or someone else will.” Ray Davis

“Though I think and speak of greater becoming, I, too, am an infinite work in progress.” T.F. Hodge

“The future you have, tomorrow, won't be the same future you had, yesterday.” Chuck Palahniuk, Rant

“People who say that yesterday was better than today are ultimately devaluing their own existence.” Karl Lagerfeld

“The atmosphere of officialdom would kill anything that breathes the air of human endeavour, would extinguish hope and fear alike in the supremacy of paper and ink.” Joseph Conrad, The Shadow-Line

“I blinked at her, suddenly loathing her to the depths of my soul. Not only was she probably rather evil, and definitely thoroughly unpleasant, but she also didn't read.” Nicole Peeler

“But in Africa bureaucrats are usually too proud to accept a bribe, something I admire when I'm not the one being arrested.” Tahir Shah, In Search of King Solomon's Mines

“I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how a man could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.” Abraham Lincoln

“The world is to be carried forward by truth, which at first offends, which wins its way by degrees, which the many hate and would rejoice to crush.” William Ellery Channing

“People are never so completely and enthusiastically evil as when they act out of religious conviction.” Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery

“If somebody says "I love you" to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol holder requires? "I love

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” Eleanor Roosevelt

“The cry of the poor is is not always just, but if you don't listen to it, you will never know what justice is.” Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present

“There's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America.” Barack Obama

“When it comes to world news, attitude is what marks the distinction between justice and vengeance. Justice is pure, but vengeance brings more ruin.” Criss Jami

“I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.” J.D. Salinger