"If you want to be successful, never laugh!"

“Until we in the community have made up our minds that what we really want is expiation, or removal, or reform, or or the discouragement of potential criminals, we shall get none of these, but only a confusion in which crime breeds more crime.”

“It is possible that the distinction between moral relativism and moral absolutism has sometimes been blurred because an excessively consistent practice of either leads to the same practical result — ruthlessness in political life.”

Source : Richard Hofstadter (2011). “The Age of Reform”, p.16, Vintage

“I can't remember why or how I started writing, but I think it was always a way of making sense of the world.”

“If you act like the river, you ultimately flow past all the rocks along the way.”

Source : "How to Break All The Rules and Get Everything You Want" by James Altucher, jamesaltucher.com.

“The most aggressive artists often hide their romantic side.”

“I've concluded that the metric by which God will assess my life isn't dollars, but the individual people whose lives I've touched. I think that's the way it will work for us all. Don't worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people.”

“When women's sexuality is imagined to be passive or "dirty," it also means that men's sexuality is automatically positioned as aggressive and right-no matter what form it takes. And when one of the conditions of masculinity, a concept that is already so fragile in men's minds, is that men dissociate from women and prove their manliness through aggression, we're encouraging a culture of violence and sexuality that's detrimental to both men and women.”

“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition...”