Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
—William Shakespeare, Hamlet
My God—life! Who can understand even one little bit of it?
—Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle
Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn’t.
—from the film Little Big Man
When ye be an anvil, lay ye very still;
When ye be a hammer, strike with all thy will.
—apparently Goethe, by way of John L. Lewis
A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
—Steven Wright
Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?
—Bob Dylan, Ballad in Plain D
One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.
—Albert Einstein
Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.
—Mark Twain
Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.
—Justice Potter Stewart
Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.
—Judge Learned Hand
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing the ground.... Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will.
—Frederick Douglass
Civil liberties victories never stay won, but must be fought for over and over again.
—Ira Glasser
One man can make a difference, and every man should try.
—John F. Kennedy
Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
—Horace Mann
Tiger got to hunt;
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder, “Why, why, why?”
Tiger got to sleep;
Bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.
—Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle