William Penn

It is admirable to consider how many Millions of People come into, and go out of the World, Ignorant of themselves, and of the World they have lived in.

Any government is free to the people under it (whatever be the frame) where the law rules, and the people are a party to those laws, and more than this is tyranny, oligarchy, or confusion.

There can be no friendship where there is no freedom. Friendship loves a free air, and will not be fenced up in straight and narrow enclosures.

If thou rise with an Appetite, thou art sure never to sit down without one.

God is better served in resisting a Temptation to Evil, than in many formal Prayers.

Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them, and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it. But, if men be bad, let the government be ever so good, they will endeavor to warp and spoil it to their turn.

All that appears is devoid of independent existence, just like a magical apparition or a dream.

In all evils which admits a remedy, impatience should be avoided, because it wastes the time and attention in complaints which, if properly applied, might remove the cause.

Put on the lights there, now. Before we go any further here, has it ever occurred to any of you that all this is simply one grand misunderstanding? Since you’re not here to learn anything, but to be taught so you can pass these tests, knowledge has to be organized so it can be taught, and it has to be reduced to information so it can be organized do you follow that? In other words this leads you to assume that organization is an inherent property of knowledge itself, and that disorder and chaos are simply irrelevant forces that threaten it from outside. In fact it’s exactly the opposite. Order is simply a thin, perilous condition we try to impose on the basic reality of chaos…

The good rain, like a bad preacher, does not know when to leave off.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.

Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats.

Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction,a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse.

The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out.

The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?

My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.

One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.

The measure of a great leader, is their success in bringing everyone around to their opinion twenty years later.

Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.