It's time to fundamentally change the way that we do business in Washington. To help build a new foundation for the 21st century, we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative. That will demand new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent.
Barack Obama

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.
Henry David Thoreau

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
Henry David Thoreau

I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.
Henry David Thoreau

It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.
Henry David Thoreau

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
Henry David Thoreau

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
Henry David Thoreau

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.
Henry David Thoreau

We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.
Henry David Thoreau

While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.
Henry David Thoreau

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.
Henry David Thoreau

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
Henry David Thoreau

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.
Henry David Thoreau

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.
Henry David Thoreau

Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.
Henry David Thoreau

Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?
Henry David Thoreau

Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.
Henry David Thoreau

There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect.
Henry David Thoreau

The universe is wider than our views of it.
Henry David Thoreau

May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love!
Henry David Thoreau