It's easy to get caught up in where the world is going and lose sight of the direction we were headed.

All those people who rejected me gave me a head-start on freedom, because the fear and obedience we are all taught, well, those things weren't getting me any love.

Your smile and your laughter lit my whole world.

Amongst the onslaught of social noise, we continue to grow and develop our personhood.

God is not looking for beneficiaries; He's looking for sons and daughters

English: "A dadascientist provokes in a way, so scientists and philosophers try to think other ways than they were taught to, so they could discover something new easily.

The Imagination merely enables us to wander into the darkness of the unknown where, by the dim light of the knowledge we carry, we may glimpse something that seems of interest. But when we bring it out and examine it more closely it usually proves to be only trash whose glitter had caught our attention. Imagination is at once the source of all hope and Inspirational but also of frustration. To forget this is to court despair.

I realized that the good stories were affecting the organs of my body in various ways, and the really good ones were stimulating more than one organ. An effective story grabs your gut, tightens your throat, makes your heart race and your lungs pump, brings tears to your eyes or an explosion of laughter to your lips.

Being a role model is the most powerful form of educating...too often fathers neglect it because they get so caught up in making a living they forget to make a life.

Reason, Observation and Experience - the Holy Trinity of Science - have taught us that happiness is the only good; that the time to be happy is now, and the way to be happy is to make others so. This is enough for us. In this belief we are content to live and die. If by any possibility the existence of a power superior to, and independent of, nature shall be demonstrated, there will then be time enough to kneel. Until then, let us stand erect.

To be taught to read-what is the use of that, if you know not whether what you read is false or true? To be taught to write or to speak-but what is the use of speaking, if you have nothing to say? To be taught to think-nay, what is the use of being able to think, if you have nothing to think of? But to be taught to see is to gain word and thought at once, and both true.

Halfway down the aisle, Jamie suddenly seemed to tire, and they stopped while she caught her breath...It was, I remembered thinking, the most difficult walk anyone ever had to make. In every way, a walk to remember.

Be fearless. Have the courage to take risks. Go where there are no guarantees. Get out of your comfort zone even if it means being uncomfortable. The road less traveled is sometimes fraught with barricades bumps and uncharted terrain. But it is on that road where your character is truly tested And have the courage to accept that you're not perfect nothing is and no one is - and that's OK.

In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.

I have been right, Basil, haven't I, to take my love out of poetry, and to find my wife in Shakespeare's plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.

"The busybody (banned as sexist, demeaning to older women) who lives next door called my daughter a tomboy (banned as sexist) when she climbed the jungle (banned; replaced with "rain forest") gym. Then she had the nerve to call her an egghead and a bookworm (both banned as offensive; replaced with "intellectual") because she read fairy (banned because suggests homosexuality; replace with "elf") tales.

No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

"The stars had only one task: they taught me how to read.

"McGough: I'm sorry. I'm afraid I've caught poetry.

creativity keeps the world alive, yet, everyday we are asked to be ashamed of honoring it, wanting to live our lives as artists. i've carried the shame of being a 'creative' since i came to the planet; have been asked to be something different, more, less my whole life. thank spirit, my wisdom is deeper than my shame, and i listened to who i was. i want to say to all the creatives who have been taught to believe who you are is not enough for this world, taught that a life of art will amount to nothing, know that who we are, and what we do is life. when we create, we are creating the world. remember this, and commit.

Note, to-day, an instructive, curious spectacle and conflict. Science, (twin, in its fields, of Democracy in its)-Science, testing absolutely all thoughts, all works, has already burst well upon the world-a sun, mounting, most illuminating, most glorious-surely never again to set. But against it, deeply entrench'd, holding possession, yet remains, (not only through the churches and schools, but by imaginative literature, and unregenerate poetry,) the fossil theology of the mythic-materialistic, superstitious, untaught and credulous, fable-loving, primitive ages of humanity.

Wisdom is not to know everything, but to know enough in order to stop taking yourself and the world too seriously. Wisdom could be the last and eternal Laughter!

My friend Madea has "attitude" that comes with wisdom. Back in our teens and twenties, we thought we knew everything and made all those foolish mistakes. Then, when we got a little older, at thirty, we started getting these flashes of light, revelations of what a great and lucky thing it is that we didn't get caught doing those stupid things back then. Around forty, if we are lucky, we stop lying to ourselves. Fifty and above, we've run out of patience for foolishness. Take me to the bottom line.