“One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.” — Nietzsche

“How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.” — Gioacchino Rossini

“No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.” — W.H. Auden

“People are wrong when they say that the opera isn’t what it used to be. It is what it used to be — that’s what’s wrong with it!” — Noël Coward

“All men are mortal. Socrates was mortal. Therefore, all men are Socrates.” — Woody Allen

“I am by heritage a Jew, by citizenship a Swiss, and by makeup a human being, and only a human being, without any special attachment to any state or national entity whatsoever.” — Albert Einstein

“I want to be a human being, nothing more and nothing less. … I don’t suppose we can ever stop hating each other, but why encourage that by keeping the old labels with their ready-made history of millennial hate?” — Isaac Asimov

“Patriots always talk of dying for their country, and never of killing for their country.” — Bertrand Russell

“If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman … because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.” — Montesquieu

“Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.” — George Bernard Shaw

“The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.” — G.K. Chesterton

“If you choose to represent the various parts in life by holes upon a table, of different shapes, — some circular, some triangular, some square, some oblong, — and the persons acting these parts by bits of wood of similar shapes, we shall generally find that the triangular person has got into the square hole, the oblong into the triangular, and a square person has squeezed himself into the round hole. The officer and the office, the doer and the thing done, seldom fit so exactly, that we can say they were almost made for each other.” — Sydney Smith

“When lost in a forest go always down hill. When lost in a philosophy or doctrine go upward.” — Ambrose Bierce

“Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.” — Samuel Butler

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.” — Albert Einstein

“Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.” — Ogden Nash

“You cannot learn to skate without making yourself ridiculous — the ice of life is slippery.” — George Bernard Shaw (quoting the motto of the Cambridge Fabian Society)

“People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it’s impossible to count them accurately.” — Oscar Wilde