"Creativity is intelligence having fun." ~ Albert Einstein

I, a universe of atoms, an atom in the universe. ~ Richard Feynman

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” ~ Viktor Frankl

”Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.” ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

“The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.” ~ Charles Bukowski

”Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.” ~ Alain de Botton

“A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness.” ~ Jean Genet

"Art Is a Way Out. Do not let life overwhelm you. When the old paths are choked with the débris of failure, look for newer and fresher paths. Art is just such a path. Art is distilled from suffering.” ~ Nathanael West

Carl Jung

"Bach is how buildings got taller. It's how we got to the moon." ~ Charles Mingus

”Our eyes are full of terrible confessions.” ~ Anne Sexton

"We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.” ~ Elie Wiesel

” Two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead.” ~ Carl von Clausewitz

"To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself." ~ Henry Miller

”The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” ~ Antonio Gramsci

"For believe me! — the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer! At long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due: — it will want to rule and possess, and you with it!" ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

"Real love is never perplexed, never qualifies, never rejects, never demands. It replenishes, by grace of restoring unlimited circulation. It burns, because it knows the true meaning of sacrifice. It is life illuminated." ~ Henry Miller

“To earn salvation one has to become inoculated with sin. One has to savor them all, the capital as well as the trivial sins. One has to earn death with all one’s appetites, refuse no poison, reject no experience however degrading or sordid. One has to come to the end of one’s forces, learn that one is a slave—in whatever realm—in order to desire emancipation.” ~ Henry Miller

“Keep awake, alive, new. Perform the paradox of being hard and yet soft. Survive without calcification of the tender membranes. Be a poet. Be alive.” ~ Tennessee Williams