He that knows nothing doubts nothing.
Herbert (1593-1632)

To do nothing is in everyone's power.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck by the difference between what things are and what they might have been.
Hazlitt (1778-1830)

Every new opinion at its starting is precisely a minority of one.
Thomas Carlysle (1795-1881)

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.
Emerson (1803-1882)

The perpetual obstacle to human advancement is custom.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

On the whole, it is patience which makes the final difference between those who succeed or fail in all things. All the greatest people have it in an infinite degree, and among the less, the patient weak ones always conquer the impatient strong.
John Ruskin (1819-1900)

It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had the individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions.
Robert G.Ingersoll (1833-1899)

Crank - a man with a new idea until it succeeds.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

That which seems to be the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in another.
Adlai Stevenson. (1850-1894)

A strange lot this, to be dropped down in a world of barbarians - men who see clearly enough the barbarity of all ages except their own.
Ernest Crosby (1856-1907)

Custom wil reconcile people to any atrocity; and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jeopardy.
John Dewey (1859-1952)

The decent moderation of today will be the least of human things tomorrow. At the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the opinion of good sense and of the good medium was certainly that people ought not to burn too large a number of heretics; extreme and unreasonable opinion obviously demanded that they should burn none at all.
Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949)

The unfortunate thing about this world is that good habits are so much easier to give up than bad ones.
Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from that of their social environment.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

The vast majority of human beings dislike and even dread all notions with which they are not familiar. Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have always been derided as fools and madmen.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

Real progress is progress in charity, all other advances being secondary thereto.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

Nothing is more powerful than an individual acting out of his conscience, thus helping to bring the collective conscience to life.
Norman Cousins (1915- )

Every civilizing step in history has been ridiculed as 'sentimental', 'impractical', or 'womanish', etc., by those whose fun, profit or convenience was at stake.
Joan Gilbert (1931 - )

Mankind continues to become gradually less cruel because a few people in every generation keep saying, "This isn't right. It hurts me to see it."
Joan Gilbert (1931- )