"Those who seek consolation in existing churches often pay for their peace of mind with a tacit agreement to ignore a great deal of what is known about the way the world works."
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1990

"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it."
The Buddha

"Self-esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves."
Nathaniel Branden

"The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them."
Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), 'Notebook,' 1935

"There is no stimulus like that which comes from the consciousness of knowing that others believe in us"
Orison Sweet Marden

"Never let go of hope. One day you will see that it all has finally come together. What you have always wished for has finally come to be. You will look back and laugh at what has passed and you will ask yourself... 'How did I get through all of that?"
Anonymous

"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;*
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son! "

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
English writer &, poet
from Rewards and Fairies, 1910, If

*These two lines are inscribed over the door to the center court at Wimbledon.

"The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just."
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

"We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be."
George Bernard Shaw (Irish literary critic, playwright and essayist. 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature, 1856-1950)

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
Stephen Roberts