They've lost confidence in a system they were finally qualified to be a part of. -- paraphrase? of a quote by Jaime Escolar to his wife referring to his Hispanic Calculus students, from the film Stand and Deliver

There is a pleasure in having no pleasure. -- Martin to Candide, Candide

Aren't you a man who once said, "Death smiles at us all?" All we can do is smile back. -- Maximus to Comitus before he stabs the Gladiator in the back

Strength and honor. -- Maximus to Quintus

Sensitivity is lovely, but impractical. -- Toni Morrison

Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

With all humility, I think "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might" infinitely more important than the vain attempt to love one's neighbor as oneself. If you want to hit a bird on the wing, you must have all your will in a focus; you must not be thinking about yourself, and, equally, you must not be thinking about your neighbor; you must be living in your eye on that bird. Every achievement is a bird on the wing. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you. -- Jesus, Gospel of Thomas in the Nag Hammadi manuscripts

A witty chess master once said that the difference between a master and a beginning chess player is that the beginner has everything clearly fixed in mind, while to the master everything is a mystery. -- N. Ia. Vilenkin

Marshall's Generalized Iceberg Theorem: Seven-eighths of everything can't be seen. Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
-- Albert Einstein

All things begin in a Void, from the Void springs Vibration, and Vibration forms the elements of Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire. Earth stands, Wind blows, Fire dances, Water flows. This is the essence of all creation, but at the very heart of Everything there is Nothing. Is it the notes of the music that make it beautiful, or the silence between them? -- Unknown

Never fall in the trap of thinking that the enemy thinks the way you do. -- some historian

In order for intimidation to occur, the intimidator has to make the effort, but, equally important, the target of those efforts have to agree to be intimidated.
-- paraphrase of a quote by George F. Kennan, US diplomat

The test of any empire comes in administering it, for even the most repressive tyranny requires a certain amount of acquiescence among its subjects. Coercion and terror cannot everywhere and indefinitely prop up authority: sooner or later the social, economic, and psychological costs of such measures begin to outweigh the benefits...
-- paraphrase of quote by John Lewis Gaddis, US historian

And into Asylum, like a great black engine, roaring to eternity. Ravaging the already benighted landscape with its savage, malevolent presence. And within the legions of the truly damned - insanity - sheer and stark, and once in human form, now gutted and torn by eons of glutted indulgence. There bloodlust flecking the oily walls, living in the shrieks of victims ensnared, hanged, drown, and quartered, by the serpent's squalid writhings. This is the place I have not wanted to dream of, and the dream is now the place I partly live through... -- Shadowman, PC Game

Still unwilling to make sacrifices - that's what makes you weak. -- Magneto to Xavier in X-Men Movie

Mankind has always feared what it does not understand. -- Magneto to Senator Kelly in X-Men Movie

Why do you ask questions to which you already know the answers? -- Magneto to Xavier in X-Men Movie

We are the future, Charles - not them. They no longer matter. -- Magneto to Xavier in X-Men Movie

One must never lose sight of the simple pleasures of life. -- Unknown

Carpe diem - Seize the day, gather your rosebuds while you may... -- Unknown

I am on the last millionth infinite tentacle of the spiderweb, a worrier, lost, separate, a worm, a thought, a self ... -- Allen Ginsberg, "Lysergic Acid"

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. -- Nietzsche

Free your mind. -- Morpheus to Neo in The Matrix

When a trout rising to a fly gets hooked on a line and finds himself unable to swim about freely, he begins with a fight which results in struggles and splashes and sometimes an escape. Often, of course, the situation is too tough for him.
In the same way, the human being struggles with his environment and with the hooks that catch him. Sometimes, he masters his difficulties; sometimes, they are too much for him. His struggles are all that the world sees and it naturally misunderstands them. It is hard for a free fish to understand what is happening to a hooked one.
-- Karl A. Menninger