People can justify almost anything. That's why history keeps repeating itself.

from something I read

In the end is it not futile to try and follow the course of a quarrel between husband and wife? Such a conversation is sure to meander more than any other. It draws in tributary arguments and grievances from years before – all quite incomprehensible to any but the two people they concern most nearly. Neither party is ever proved right or wrong in such a case, or, if they are, what does it signify? 

Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

 

Who overcomes by force hath overcome but half his foe.

Satan, Paradise Lost by Milton

Woke

The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys

Traffic

Power

Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.

George Orwell, 1984

Nor did He lie asleep before the Word sounded above these waters; ‘before’ and ‘after’ did not exist until His voice was heard. Pure essence, and pure matter, and the two joined into one were shot forth without flaw, like three bright arrows from a three-string bow. 

Dante, The Divine Comedy

The Seven Virtues

Charity, Faith, and Hope.  Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance.

Dante, The Divine Comedy

Who sees need and waits a plea, already half refuses.

 Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

 

Oh ignorant, self-seeking cupidity which spurs us so in the short mortal life and steeps us so through all eternity!

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Many passengers would rather have stayed home.

Carl Sagan

Wisdom for our time

Quando omni flunkus moritati.

As related by Red Green of Possum Lodge 

Evolution vs Capitalism

Evolution is mindless, economics is mindful,

collectively and individually. 

Did you ever know a rich person that didn't want to be more rich?

Said to Angelina

The universe is a giant quantum-mechanical relativistic Rube-Goldberg patchwork construct, knit by interactions of its constituents, changed and ever changing through these interactions.

Vandana Singh, Ambiguity Machines and other stories

To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.

Paul R. Ehrlich

The better you know someone the less understandable they become. That's what intimacy is not a threshold of knowledge but a capitulation to ignorance, an acceptance that another person is made as bewildered and ungovernable by her life as you are by yours.

Anthony Marra, Mercury Pictures Presents

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel in order to be tough. The vigorous expression of our American community spirit is truly important. The ancient injunction to love thy neighbor as thyself is still the force that animates our  faith—a faith that we are determined shall live and conquer in a world poisoned by hatred and ravaged by war.”
 

Franklin D. Roosevelt, October 13, 1940

Don’t be afraid of life! How good life is when one does something good and just!

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

The Devil -- Ivan's Nightmare

If everything in the universe were sensible, nothing would happen.... I was predestined 'to deny' and yet I am genuinely good-hearted and not at all inclined to negation. 'No, you must go and deny, without denial there's no criticism and what would a journal be without a column of criticism?' Without criticism it would be nothing but one 'hosannah.' But nothing but hosannah is not enough for life, the hosannah must be tried in the crucible of doubt and so on, in the same style. But I don't meddle in that, I didn't create it, I am not answerable for it. Well, they've chosen their scapegoat, they've made me write the column of criticism and so life was made possible..... I might bawl hosannah, and the indispensable minus would disappear at once, and good sense would reign supreme throughout the whole world. And that, of course, would mean the end of everything, even of magazines and news-papers, for who would take them in? 

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Never miss a good chance to shut up. 

If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

If you’re riding’ ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it’s still there.

 Will Rogers