“He who is not a good servant will not be a good master.” — Plato

“It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.” — James Baldwin, Collected Essays: Notes of a Native Son / Nobody Knows My Name / The Fire Next Time / No Name in the Street / The Devil Finds Work / Other Essays

“The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.” — Leonardo da Vinci

Men first feel necessity, then look for utility, next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their substance. — Giambattista Vico

“There are only four possible states in which the human being can live, according to revealed sources. A person is either receiving blessings (niʿmah) or tribulations (balā’) from God; or is either living in obedience (ṭāʿah) to God or in disobedience (maʿṣiyyah).” — Hamza Yusuf, Purification of the Heart: Signs, Symptoms and Cures of the Spiritual Diseases of the Heart

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” — Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked

“At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.” — George Orwell

“I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me.

“استغنِ عمن شئت تكن نظيره، واحتج إلى من شئت تكن أسيره، وأحسن إلى من شئت تكن أميره.” — علي بن أبي طالب

“Communist until you get rich. Feminist until you get married. Atheist until the airplane starts falling.” — juanda brahma metta