* The hero is one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by. The saint is the man who walks through the dark paths of the world, himself a light.
-- Felix Adler

The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the State but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime. . .
-- Albert Einstein

* "To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

My life is an indivisible whole, and all my attitudes run into one another; and they all have their rise in my insatiable love for mankind.
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi

Never, "for the sake of peace and quiet," deny your own experience or convictions.
-- Dag Hammarskjöld

I've realized that being happy is a choice. You never want to rub anybody the wrong way or not be fun to be around, but you have to be happy. When I get logical and I don't trust my instincts - Thats when I get in trouble.
~ Angelina Jolie

I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside me.
-- Abraham Lincoln

One of the things my parents taught me, and I'll always be grateful for the gift, is to not ever let anybody else define me.
-- Wilma Mankiller

I have to keep trying to manifest actions and deeds that reflect the real me, even if the world doesn't yet see me the way I know I am inside, because I know who I am.
-- Robert Alan Silverstein

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
-- Henry David Thoreau

Do not allow yourself to be imprisoned by any affection. Keep your solitude. The day, if it ever comes, when you are given true affection there will be no opposition between interior solitude and friendship, quite the reverse. It is even by this infallible sign that you will recognize it.
-- Simone Weil

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large; I contain multitudes.
~ Walt Whitman

* "You've got to follow your passion. You've got to figure out what it is you love--who you really are. And have the courage to do that. I believe that the only courage anybody ever needs is the courage to follow your own dreams."
-- Oprah Winfrey