How should we like it were stars to burn ... With a passion for us we could not return?... If equal affection cannot be, ... Let the more loving one be me.—W. H. Auden

Resignation is a fruit that ripens at the gates of heaven. How powerful, how glorious the calm smile, the pure brow of the resigned human creature.—Balzac

I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends. —Walt Whitman

America’s mental illness is guns—The Philadelphia Inquirer

It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled. —Unknown

I think I have to accept that in order to see changes and reform in the structure of the country, we have to pay a price and every person will pay some price. I, too, have no choice but to pay a price if I want to continue making independent films.— Mohammad Rasoulof

We are living in a period of exponential change. On the stage of global geopolitics, the last five centuries of near-complete Western domination is drawing to a close, quickly being replaced by a multipolar world where Western societies are forced to compete and interact with non-Western societies as peers. This new multipolar reality will cause a massive shift of consciousness that few in the West have prepared for.—Frederick Kuo

Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.—George Orwell

Recent events have alarmed us, demonstrating how ill-defined policy goals, bellicose rhetoric, policies and brinkmanship, and operating outside the well-defined framework of international law can easily bring countries to the brink of mutual disaster. —Middle East scholars

Countries go to war when they have decided that it’s in their interests to fight… Shooting down an RQ-4 drone — even in international waters — should not fundamentally change the likelihood of escalation. —Michael C. Horowitz , Sarah E. Kreps and Matthew Fuhrman