Giving style— to one's character - a great and rare art! It is exercised by those who see all the strengths and weaknesses of their own natures and then comprehend them in an artistic plan until everything appears as art and reason and even weakness delights the eye.

...there was alienation in the standing consciousness that his squareness would not fit the round hole that had been prepared for him.

Most schooling is training for stupidity and conformity, and that's institutional, but occasionally you get a spark, somebody'll challenge your mind, make you think and so on, and that has a tremendous effect you just reach all sorts of people. Of course if you do it you may very have problems, you have to tread the narrow line. There are plenty of people who don't want students to think, they're afraid of the crisis of democracy. If people start thinking you get all these problems that I quoted before. They won't have enough humility to submit to a civil rule or they'll start trying to press their demands in the political arena and have ideas of their own, instead of beleiving what they're told. And privelage and power typically doesn't want that and so they react and the high school teacher that tries to get students to think may find oppression, firing and so on.

It's in the morning, for most of us. It's that time, those few seconds when we're coming out of sleep but we're not really awake yet. For those few seconds we're something more primitive than what we are about to become. We have just slept the sleep of our most distant ancestors, and something of them and their world still clings to us. For those few moments we are unformed, uncivilized. We are not the people we know as ourselves, but creatures more in tune with a tree than a keyboard. We are untitled, unnamed, natural, suspended between was and will be, the tadpole before the frog, the worm before the butterfly. We are for a few brief moments, anything and everything we could be. And then...and then -- ah -- we open our eyes and the day is before us and ... we become ourselves.

He who prides himself an extraordinary person by his deeds is rejected by the world; he who has independent ideas is hated by the mass.

Assent-and you are sane-Demure-you're straightaway dangerous-And handled with a Chain-.

It isn't fair that there's pressure exerted on those who choose to live on the edges of the bell-shaped curve of normal.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

I question whether God himself would wish me to hide behind the principles of non-violence while innocent persons were being slaughtered.

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on a cloak of non-violence to cover impotence.

Nonviolence is not a garment to put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our very being.

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 he hears, however measured or far away.

Passive resistance is a sport for gentleman (and ladies)-just like the pursuit of war, a heroic enterprise for the ruling classes but a grievous burden on the rest.

Do the common thing in an uncommon way.

Commandment Number One of any truly civilized society is this: Let people be different.