I'm so lucky to have been raised the way I have, because my parents believed that everyone had the right to their own feelings, opinions, and existence; as long as they weren't harming others, you had to defend those rights.

George Clooney

It is the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) that those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.

Charles Darwin

No. It's not a game. This is the world. It is not the one we were supposed to have, but it's the one we made. We did this. We did it with open eyes and willing hands. We broke it, and there is no putting it back together. But I'm damned already... so at least I'm going to try.

Jonathan Hickman, from "East of West, Vol. 1: The Promise"

Germany has spent the decades since World War II in national penance for Nazi crimes. America spent the decades after the Civil War transforming Confederate crimes into virtues. It is illegal to fly the Nazi flag in Germany. The Confederate flag is enmeshed in the state flag of Mississippi.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the guy who'll decide where to go.

Dr. Seuss

In politics, the near future is likely to be closer to George Orwell’s 1984 than to Brave New World.

Aldous Huxley

One in 200 stars has habitable Earth-like planets surrounding it - in the galaxy, half a billion stars have Earth-like planets going around them - that's huge, half a billion. So when we look at the night sky, it makes sense that someone is looking back at us.

Michio Kaku

I believe one of the greatest human failings is to prefer to be right than to be effective. Political correctness is always obsessed with how right it is without thinking how effective it might be. I do relish transgression and I deeply and instinctively distrust conformity and orthodoxy.

Stephen Fry

In the greater scheme, in the big picture, nothing we do matters. There’s no grand plan, no big win. If there's no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do. Because that's all there is. What we do, now, today. And if there's no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world.

Angel

If your ego starts out, 'I am important, I am big, I am special,' you're in for some disappointments when you look around at what we've discovered about the universe. No, you're not big. No, you're not. You're small in time and in space. And you have this frail vessel called the human body that's limited on Earth.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.

Edward D. Bono

A healthy democracy requires a decent society; it requires that we are honorable, generous, tolerant and respectful.

Charles W. Pickering