"In a sense, nearly all great civilizations that perished did so because they had crystallized, because they were incapable of adapting themselves to new conditions, new methods, new points of view. It is as though people would literally rather die than change."  --Eleanor Roosevelt 

"We would rather be ruined than changed

We would rather die in our dread

Than climb the cross of the moment

and let our illusions die."

--WH Auden, The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, who strives valiantly; who errs . . . and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."  --Theodore Roosevelt

“Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”  --Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”

“The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it.”  --Sir Terry Pratchett

"The whole work is only a drop in the ocean. But if I didn't put that drop in, the ocean would be one drop less. Same thing for you, same thing in your family, same thing in the community where you live. Just begin . . . one, one, one."  --Mother Teresa

"How powerless I am to express in human language the secrets of heaven."  --St. Therese of Lisieux