Martyrdom

"A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it."
-Oscar Wilde

Mark Twain on ambition

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions.  Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
~Mark Twain

Belief

If you can make god bleed,
The people will cease to believe in him.

The souls of the weary are drug by the tyranny of the wise and the foolish,
Tempted by the hands of fate,
The souls of the worthy will justify the feelings of the masses.

Out there, somewhere?

"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
~Bill Watterson

Degradation

History is the transformation of tumultuous conquerors into silent footnotes. ~Paul Eldridge, Maxims for a Modern Man

The difference between scientists

"A physicist, biologist and a chemist were going to the ocean for the first time.
The physicist saw the ocean and was fascinated by the waves. He said he wanted to do some research on the fluid dynamics of the waves and walked into the ocean. Obviously, he was drowned and never returned.
The biologist said he wanted to do research on the flora and fauna inside the ocean and walked inside the ocean. He too, never returned.
The chemist waited for a long time and afterwards, wrote the observation, "The physicist and the biologist are soluble in ocean water".

Hesketh Pearson

“Our true Patron Saint is not St George but Sir John Falstaff….we are the most civilised people in the world, the reason being that we are the most humorous people in the world”

The English Genius, 1939