Inspired by Dolo, I've brought you my very own quotes page. Which is better than his, because mine has Shakespeare. Ha!
"When you have them by the... attention, their hearts and minds will follow." - Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
"Your strength is merely an accident arising from the weakness of others." - Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
"Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound. Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me,
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moon-shines
Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,
Got 'tween asleep and wake? Well, then,
Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land:
Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund
As to the legitimate: fine word,--legitimate!
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper:
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!" - William Shakespeare, King Lear
"Despair and deception, Love's ugly little twins, came knockin' on my door... I let them in." - Nick Cave, "Let Love In"
"Nobody ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the American public." - H. L. Mencken
"If things are in fact so bad that people must rise in armed rebellion against the federal government, who cares if they have a federal legal right to own the firepower to do so? After the revolution, the losers will probably be dead." - John Savage
"Reason [is], the devil's bride, a beautiful whore, and God's worst enemy. There is on earth among all dangers, no more dangerous thing than a richly endowed and adroit reason, especially if she enters into spiritual matters which concern the soul and God. For it is more possible to teach an ass to read than to blind such a reason and lead it right; FOR REASON MUST BE DELUDED, BLINDED AND DESTROYED. Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense and understanding, and whatever it sees it must put out of sight, and wish to know nothing but the word of God." - Martin Luther
"I have a foreboding of an America... when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness." - Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark
"For, if once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing, and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begin upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time." - Thomas De Quincey, "On Murder Considered As One of the Fine Arts"
Second paper, 1839