It is fortunate to be of high birth, but it is no less so to be of such character that people do not care to know whether you are or are not. 

~ Jean de la Bruyere, essayist and moralist (16 Aug 1645-1696) 

There is no human being who, as a result of desiring to build a better life, should be named or declared illegal. 

~ Alejandro G. Inarritu, film director, producer, screenwriter, and composer (b. 15 Aug 1963) 

People share a common nature but are trained in gender roles. 

~ Lillie Devereux Blake, novelist, essayist, and reformer (12 Aug 1833-1913) 

Courage without conscience is a wild beast. 

~ Robert Green Ingersoll, lawyer and orator (11 Aug 1833-1899) 

Monsters remain human beings. In fact, to reduce them to a subhuman level is to exonerate them of their acts of terrorism and mass murder -- just as animals are not deemed morally responsible for killing. Insisting on the humanity of terrorists is, in fact, critical to maintaining their profound responsibility for the evil they commit. And, if they are human, then they must necessarily not be treated in an inhuman fashion. You cannot lower the moral baseline of a terrorist to the subhuman without betraying a fundamental value. 

~ Andrew Sullivan, writer (b. 10 Aug 1963) 

The principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered. 

~ Jean Piaget, psychologist (9 Aug 1896-1980) 

Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you. 

~ Wendell Berry, farmer and author (b. 5 Aug 1934) 

America has changed over the years. But these values my grandparents taught me - they haven't gone anywhere. They're as strong as ever; still cherished by people of every party, every race, every faith. They live on in each of us. What makes us American, what makes us patriots, is what's in here. That's what matters. And that's why we can take the food and music and holidays and styles of other countries, and blend it into something uniquely our own. That's why we can attract strivers and entrepreneurs from around the globe to build new factories and create new industries here. That's why our military can look the way it does - every shade of humanity, forged into common service. That's why anyone who threatens our values, whether fascists or communists or jihadists or homegrown demagogues, will always fail in the end. 

~ Barack Obama, US President (b. 4 Aug 1961)

What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give.

~ P.D. James, novelist (3 Aug 1920-2014) 

I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. 

~ James Baldwin, writer (2 Aug 1924-1987) 

I have noticed that when chickens quit quarreling over their food they often find that there is enough for all of them I wonder if it might not be the same with the human race. 

~ Don Marquis, humorist and poet (29 Jul 1878-1937) 

We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong. 

~ Karl Popper, philosopher and a professor (28 Jul 1902-1994) 

In any free society, the conflict between social conformity and individual liberty is permanent, unresolvable, and necessary. 

~ Kathleen Norris, novelist and columnist (27 Jul 1880-1966) 

I have never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from other men. There is not much harm in a lion. He has no ideals, no religion, no politics, no chivalry, no gentility; in short, no reason for destroying anything that he does not want to eat. 

~ George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (26 Jul 1856-1950) 

I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after. 

~ Ernest Hemingway, author, journalist, Nobel laureate (21 Jul 1899-1961) 

The most valuable possession you can own is an open heart. The most powerful weapon you can be is an instrument of peace. 

~ Carlos Santana, musician (b. 20 Jul 1947) 

It is never my custom to use words lightly. If twenty-seven years in prison have done anything to us, it was to use the silence of solitude to make us understand how precious words are and how real speech is in its impact on the way people live and die. 

~ Nelson Mandela, activist, South African president, Nobel laureate (18 Jul 1918-2013) 

Choose only one master - Nature. 

~ Rembrandt, painter and etcher (15 Jul 1606-1669) 

The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny. 

~ Wole Soyinka, playwright, poet, Nobel laureate (b. 13 Jul 1934) 

It’s impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well have not lived at all.
~ J.K. Rowling