“Even after making up one's mind to the sacrifices I had decided upon, there is always left a trace of envy for those who have triumphed in the melancholy struggle for literary supremacy.”

Attributed

Statement to S. K. Neumann, as quoted Karel Čapek: Life and Work (2002) by Ivan Klima

2010s, Democratic National Convention speech (2012)
Context: Those are the values that Barack and I and so many of you are trying to pass on to our own children. That's who we are. And standing before you four years ago, I knew that I did not want any of that to change if Barack became president. Well today, after so many struggles and triumphs and moments that have tested my husband in ways I never could have imagined, and I have seen firsthand that being president does not change who you are. No, it reveals the you are.

Source: Brave New World Revisited (1958), Chapter 1 (p. 12)

Giant Steps : Small Changes to Make a Big Difference : Daily Lessons in Self-mastery (1994), p. 341 <!-- Hidden section in above quote is attributed in some variants. -->
Context: You are now at a crossroads. Forget your past. Who are you now? Who have you decided you really are now? Don't think about who you have been. Who are you now? Who have you decided to become? Make this decision consciously. Make it carefully. Make it powerfully. Then act upon it.

&quot;Bush On Porn In Libraries&quot; http://www.apnic.net/mailing-lists/apple/archive/2000/03/msg00003.html by Brian Krebs, Newsbytes PM (February 28, 2000)

‘Human beings never submit to human beings.’ Even slaves practice their mean retaliations. Human beings cannot conceive of any mean retaliations. Human beings cannot conceive of any means of survival except of a single then-and-there contest. They speak of duty to one’s country and such like things, but the object of their effort is invariably the individual, and, even once the individual’s needs have been met, again the individual comes in. The incomprehensibility of society is the incomprehensibility of the individual. The ocean is not society; it is individuals. This is how I managed to gain a modicum of freedom from my terror of the illusion of the ocean called the world. I learned to behave rather aggressively, without the endless anxious worrying I knew before, responding as it were to the needs of the moment.
Third Notebook: Part One
No Longer Human

Source: Recollections on the French Revolution

From his DVD, "CM Punk: Best in the World".
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