Skill and Imagination
Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.
— Tom Stoppard
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
—James Madison, fourth US president (1751-1836)
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
— Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970)
In human affairs of danger and delicacy successful conclusion is sharply limited by hurry. So often, men trip by being in a rush. If one were properly to perform a difficult and subtle act, he should first inspect the end to be achieved and then, once he had accepted the end as desirable, he should forget it completely and concentrate solely on the means. By this method he wold not be moved to false action by anxiety or fear. Very few people learn this.
— John Steinbeck, East of Eden
My life is spent in one long effort to escape the commonplaces of existence.
— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, spoken by Sherlock Holmes in The Red-Headed League
Ditto.
Hope is the most powerful thing there is. It is the adrenalin of the soul.
— Amy Tan, from an interview on Change on To The Best of Our Knowledge