“If Man makes Conscience, then being good
Is only being worldly wise,
And universal brotherhood
A comfortable compromise.”

“There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there’s only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a fairly good time.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

“All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

“Being photographed does not make a man a good writer. It doesn't make a man anything.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“I'd like to be remembered for being a good, kind, loving, gentle man who attempted to live wisely, and who cared a lot.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

“There is a fraternity more comprehensive and more universal than the “brotherhood of man.” Let us think and speak of the “brotherhood of being.” Let us see in the ox a patient, industrious kinsman, worthy of respect. Let us see and recognize in the sheep a meek and docile fellow creature appealing to us for protection and admiration.”

John Harvey Kellogg (1852–1943) American physician

“Their children learned the lesson of compromise only too well, and it was the application of it to a question of fundamental morals that cost us our civil war. We learned once for all that compromise makes a good umbrella but a poor roof; that it is a temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

“It is not much good being wise among fools and sane among lunatics.”

Robert Greene book The 48 Laws of Power

“For Islam divides as inexorably as it binds. Islam is a close corporation and the distinction that it makes between Muslims and non-Muslims is a very real, very positive and very alienating distinction. The brotherhood of Islam is not the universal brotherhood of man. It is the brotherhood of Muslims for Muslims only. There is fraternity but its benefit is confined to those within that corporation. For those who are outside the corporation, there is nothing but contempt and enmity.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

“Man selects only for his own good: Nature only for that of the being which she tends.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"