“Why should they risk a public landing? Their ship would be impounded for evasion of custom duties. Their clothes would be torn off and sold as souvenirs.”

“We would only multiply the number of victims. Our duty is to strengthen the state and defend the people, why, then, should we publish your book.”

Vasily Grossman (1905–1964) Soviet writer and journalist who originally trained as an engineer

“We are citizens of an age, as well as of a State; and if it is held to be unseemly, or even inadmissable, for a man to cut himself off from the customs and manners of the circle in which he lives, why should it be less of a duty, in the choice of his activity, to submit his decision to the needs and the taste of his century?”

Friedrich Schiller book On the Aesthetic Education of Man

“Why should we add your book to the atomic weapons arrayed against us by our enemies. Publication of your book would help our enemies.”

Vasily Grossman (1905–1964) Soviet writer and journalist who originally trained as an engineer

“I'd much rather be a woman than a man. Women can cry, they can wear cute clothes, and they are the first to be rescued off of sinking ships.”

Gilda Radner (1946–1989) American comedian

“I could not suffer them blowing me to pieces in my own native land and they knew Fitzpatrick wronged us and why not make it public and convict him but no they would rather riddle poor unfortunate creoles.”

Ned Kelly (1855–1880) Australian bushranger

“Why should not our solemn duties, and our hastening end, render us so united, that personal contention would be impossible, in a general sympathy quickened by the breath of a forbearing and pitying charity?”

Henry Giles (1809–1882) Irish minister

“Why had such a promising world been crucified on the tree of obligation, thorned by duties, hanged by hypocrisy, smothered by customs?”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

“Where lies the land to which the ship would go?
Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.
And where the land she travels from? Away,
Far, far behind, is all that they can say.”

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861) English poet

“Because I've taken my clothes off in public doesn't mean that I've revealed every inch of my soul.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress