“All Fords are exactly alike, but no two men are just alike. Every new life is a new thing under the sun; there has never been anything just like it before, never will be again. A young man ought to get that idea about himself; he should look for the single spark of individuality that makes him different from other folks, and develop that for all he is worth. Society and schools may try to iron it out of him; their tendency is to put it all in the same mold, but I say don’t let that spark be lost; it is your only real claim to importance.” ~ Henry Ford
“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.” ~ Richard Dawkins
“Consider how many people had to be involved for a particular thought to be formed. Every thought you have involves everyone you have ever known: your teachers, your siblings, your parents, your parents’ parents, your parents’ teachers, and on and on. Without this participation from the whole, the thought wouldn’t have come out the way it did. It wouldn’t have the ground from which to form. You wouldn’t even have the language to think with. Everything happens more out of a ‘we’ than a ‘me.’ Everything in the universe is involved with everything that happens. If everything in the universe participates in scratching your nose or having a thought or having a feeling, can you really call these experiences ‘yours?’” ~ Nirmala
“I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can only rest for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not ended.” ~ Nelson Mandela