quotes about change for the better

The weirder you're going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person. ~P.J. O'Rourke



We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true. ~Robert Wilensky, 1996



The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand. ~Lewis Thomas



When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a manner that when you die the world cries and you rejoice. ~Indian Saying



Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary. ~Albert Einstein



The father of a daughter is nothing but a high-class hostage. A father turns a stony face to his sons, berates them, shakes his antlers, paws the ground, snorts, runs them off into the underbrush, but when his daughter puts her arm over his shoulder and says, "Daddy, I need to ask you something," he is a pat of butter in a hot frying pan. ~Garrison Keillor



By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower. ~Rabindrath Tagore



Imagination and fiction make up more than three-quarters of our real life. ~Simone Weil



Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark. ~Rabindranath Tagore



No man can cause more grief than that one clinging blindly to the vices of his ancestors. ~William Faulkner



The only thing wrong with being an atheist is that there's nobody to talk to during an orgasm. ~Author Unknown



Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains. ~Eric Hoffer



Darkness cannot put out the Light. It can only make God brighter. ~Author Unknown



Difficult things take a long time, impossible things a little longer. ~Andre A. Jackson



I'll be the in to your sane. ~Numan



People understand contests. You take a bunch of kids throwing rocks at random and people look askance, but if you go and hold a rock-throwing contest - people understand that. ~Don Murray



Law never made men a whit more just; and by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? The mass of men serve the State thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies.... In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. ~Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience



By common consent gray hairs are a crown of glory; the only object of respect that can never excite envy. ~George Bancroft



If you've lost your enthusiasm, there's no better place to find it than on a skipping excursion. And, you might just find your lost youth as well! ~Jessi Lane Adams



Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience. ~Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, 1951