Story

"When we get to the end of the story, you will know more than you do now..."
--Hans Christian Andersen,
"The Snow Queen"

Antagonisms

"Seeing a murder on television can … help work off one’s antagonisms. And if you haven’t any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some."
--Alfred Hitchcock,
Interview, National Observer (August 15, 1966)

Journalism

"Journalism is one of the devices whereby industrial autocracy keeps its control over political democracy; it is the day-by-day, between-elections propaganda, whereby the minds of the people are kept in a state of acquiescence, so that when the crisis of an election comes, they go to the polls and cast their ballots for either one of the two candidates of their exploiters."
--Upton Sinclair,
"The Brass Check" (1919)

Normal VIII

"'Only different people change the world,' Granny used to say. 'No one normal has ever changed a crapping thing.'"
--Fredrik Backman,
"My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry"

Trails

"May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets' towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you--beyond that next turning of the canyon walls."
--Edward Abbey,
Preface (dated June 1987) for 1988 reprint of "Desert Solitaire"

Technically

"A proper school should teach nothing but bookkeeping, agriculture, geometry, dead languages made deader by leaving out all the amusing literature, and the Hebrew Bible as interpreted by men superbly trained to ignore contradictions, men technically called 'Fundamentalists'."
--Sinclair Lewis,
"Elmer Gantry" (1927)

Gnawing

"One should never direct people towards happiness, because happiness too is an idol of the market-place. One should direct them towards mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its prey can be happy too, but only human beings can feel affection for each other, and this is the highest achievement they can aspire to."
--Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,
Shulubin, in "Cancer Ward" (1968)

Duchess

"While we were being bombed in Dresden, sitting in a cellar with our arms over our heads in case the ceiling fell, one slider said as though he were a duchess in a mansion on a cold and rainy night, 'I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight.' Nobody laughed, but we were still all glad he said it."
--Kurt Vonnegut Jr,
"A Man Without A Country" (2005)

Danger II

"There's a danger our fiscal bankruptcy might overtake our moral bankruptcy."
--Mort Sahl

Power VI

"The power of good is shown not by triumphantly conquering evil, but by continuing to resist evil while facing certain defeat."
--Edith Hamilton,
"Mythology"

Inter-Stellar

"The fate of a world isn't determined by its best examples, but by its worst. It takes a few to destroy the many, especially when even the best of you can be dragged down into the mire. Judging from your example, brother against brother, friend against friend, you people have such a potential for violence, sheer and varnished wickedness, I've got every confidence you'll destroy yourself before you build your first inter-stellar engine. We've got nothing to fear from you."
--The Outer Limits,
The Preacher, "Heart's Desire"

Ability VI

"Despite a lack of natural ability, I did have the one element necessary to all early creativity: naïveté, that fabulous quality that keeps you from knowing just how unsuited you are for what you are about to do."
--Steve Martin,
"Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life"

Distinct

"No individual has any right to come into the world and go out of it without leaving behind him distinct and legitimate reasons for having passed through it."
--George Washington Carver

Secret II

"The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm."
--Aldous Huxley

Landru

Landru Computer: I am Landru. I am he. All that he was I am, his experience, his knowledge.
   
Kirk: But not his wisdom. He may have programmed you, but he could not have given you a soul. You are a machine.
   
Landru Computer: Your statement is irrelevant.

--Star Trek (Original Series),
"The Return of the Archons"

Blurred

"Empathy, he once had decided, must be limited to herbivores or anyhow omnivores who could depart from a meat diet. Because, ultimately, the empathic gift blurred the boundaries between hunter and victim, between the successful and the defeated."
--Philip K. Dick,
"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"

Interpretations

"Justice remains the tool of a few powerful interests; legal interpretations will continue to be made to suit the convenience of the oppressor powers."
--Che Guevara,
"On Development" Speech delivered at the plenary session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in Geneva, Switzerland (March 25, 1964)

Demure

"Truth is a demure lady, much too ladylike to knock you on your head and drag you to her cave. She is there, but people must want her, and seek her out."
--William F. Buckley Jr.

Denial 1.5

"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep."
--Saul Bellow

Crises

"What one decides to do in crisis depends on one's philosophy of life, and that philosophy cannot be changed by an incident. If one hasn't any philosophy in crises, others make the decision."
--Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973)
first female US Representative

Creates

"The talent works, the genius creates."
--Robert Schumann

Poet II

"The scientist has marched in and taken the place of the poet. But one day somebody will find the solution to the problems of the world and remember, it will be a poet, not a scientist."
--Frank Lloyd Wright

Cadres

"We must finally understand that of all the precious capital in the world, the most precious capital, the most decisive capital, is human beings [...]. Cadres decide everything!"
--Joseph Stalin,
Address to the Graduates from the Red Army Academies. (May 4, 1935)

Important II

"The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why."
--Mark Twain

Blend

"The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of bold projects and new ideas. Rather, it will belong to those who can blend passion, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the great enterprises and ideals of American society."
--Robert F. Kennedy
November 20, 1925 - June 6, 1968

Judge

"But history will judge you, and as the years pass, you will ultimately judge yourself, in the extent to which you have used your gifts and talents to lighten and enrich the lives of your fellow men. In your hands lies the future of your world and the fulfillment of the best qualities of your own spirit."
--Robert F. Kennedy

Voices

"All great questions must be raised by great voices, and the greatest voice is the voice of the people - speaking out - in prose, or painting or poetry or music; speaking out - in homes and halls, streets and farms, courts and cafes - let that voice speak and the stillness you hear will be the gratitude of mankind."
--Robert F. Kennedy

Censure

"Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their peers, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change."
--Robert F. Kennedy

Glut

"My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment. My companion will be of the same nature as myself and will be content with the same fare. We shall make our bed of dried leaves; the sun will shine on us as on man and will ripen our food. The picture I present to you is peaceful and human, and you must feel that you could deny it only in the wantonness of power and cruelty"
--Mary Shelley, "Frankenstein"
The monster to Victor Frankenstein

Captain

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done!
The ship has weathered every wrack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting.

--Walt Whitman,
Memories of President Lincoln. O Captain! My Captain!