The '20s ended in an era of extravagance, sort of like the one we're in now. There was a big crash, but then the country picked itself up again, and we had some great years. Those were the days when American believed in itself. I was happy and proud to be painting it.
Norman Rockwell

To every people the land is given on condition. Perceived or not, there is a Covenant, beyond the constitution, beyond sovereign guarantee, beyond the nation's sweetest dreams of itself.
Leonard Cohen

When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.
Isaac Asimov

The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.
Laozi

President Reagan was elected on the promise of getting government off the backs of the people and now he demands that government wrap itself around the waists of the people.
Ralph Nader

Since every effort in our educational life seems to be directed toward making of the child a being foreign to itself, it must of necessity produce individuals foreign to one another, and in everlasting antagonism with each other.
Emma Goldman

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
Franz Kafka

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.
Franz Kafka

The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.
Franz Kafka

There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.
Franz Kafka

It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness. A spirited mind never stops within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength.
Michel de Montaigne

We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
Gore Vidal

Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself.
Gore Vidal

Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.
Edmund Burke

Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.
Edmund Burke

Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.
J. K. Rowling

Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain.
J. K. Rowling

I do have a blurred memory of sitting on the stairs and trying over and over again to tie one of my shoelaces, but that is all that comes back to me of school itself.
Roald Dahl

Censorship feeds the dirty mind more than the four-letter word itself.
Dick Cavett

There is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself.
Erich Fromm