Popular quotes
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“What I do when I write is that I'll do a raggedy, rough version just to hear the chorus, just to see how much I like the chorus. If it works for me that way when it's raggedy, then I'll know it will just work… Listen to that, that's at home. Janet, Randy, Me… Janet and I are going "Whoo, Whoo… Whoo, Whoo…" I do that same process with every song. It's the melody, it's the melody that's most important, If the melody can sell me, then I'll go to the next step. The idea is to transcribe from what's in your mentality onto tape. If you take a song like "Billie Jean," Where the bass line is the prominent, dominant piece, the protagonist of the song, the main driving riff that you hear, getting the character of the riff to be just the way you want it to be, that takes a lot of time. Listen, you're hearing four basses on there, doing four different personalities, and that's what gives it character, but it takes a lot of work.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

On listening to an early version of Billie Jean on an iPhone
Ebony interview (2007)

“If you cut a branch out of my forests, I'd cut your head off!”

Mehmed II (1432–1481) Ottoman sultan

Source: Aşıkpaşaoğlu History

“No one is perfect in this imperfect world.”

Patrice Lumumba (1925–1961) Congolese Prime Minister, cold war leader, executed

Congo, My Country

“Why not just tell people I'm an alien from Mars. Tell them I eat live chickens and do a voodoo dance at midnight. They'll believe anything you say, because you're a reporter. But if I, Michael Jackson, were to say, "I'm an alien from Mars and I eat live chickens and do a voodoo dance at midnight," people would say, "Oh, man, that Michael Jackson is nuts. He's cracked up. You can't believe a damn word that comes out of his mouth."”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

http://rocknrollworldmagazine.com/2015/08/82915-rock-history/

“Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

“What did he mean by "society"? The plural of human beings?”

Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human

Source: No Longer Human

“Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Speech in Jersey City, New Jersey (1 September 1980) http://www.slate.com/id/2201249/ <br class="br">1980s <br class="br">Context: Let it show on the record that when the American people cried out for economic help, Jimmy Carter took refuge behind a dictionary. Well, if it's a definition he wants, I'll give him one. A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.

“Music is like a dream. One that I cannot hear.”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

Conversations (January 1804)

“There is no spectacle on earth more appealing than that of a beautiful woman in the act of cooking dinner for someone she loves.”

Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938) American writer

“There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking it-self is dangerous.”

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) Jewish-American political theorist

“Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Source: Heliogabalus

“I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.”

Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

“Do you hate people?”

“I don't hate them… I just feel better when they're not around.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: Barfly

“Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness. Everything passes. That is the one and only thing that I have thought resembled a truth in the society of human beings where I have dwelled up to now as in a burning hell. Everything passes.”

Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human

The Third Notebook: Part Two
Source: No Longer Human

“My brain is only a receiver. In the universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength, inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

“Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Letter to Jost Winteler (1901), quoted in The Private Lives of Albert Einstein by Roger Highfield and Paul Carter (1993), p. 79 http://books.google.com/books?id=zY7FE9ZyDO0C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA79#v=onepage&q&f=false. Einstein had been annoyed that Paul Drude, editor of Annalen der Physik, had dismissed out of hand some criticisms Einstein made of Drude's electron theory of metals. <br class="br">1900s <br class="br">Variant: A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.

“The gift of mental power comes from God, Divine Being, and if we concentrate our minds on that truth, we become in tune with this great power. My Mother had taught me to seek all truth in the Bible.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor