"Yo sé quién soy —respondió don Quijote—; y sé que puedo ser no sólo los que he dicho, sino todos los Doce Pares de Francia, y aun todos los Nueve de la Fama, pues a todas las hazañas que ellos todos juntos y cada uno por sí hicieron, se aventajarán las mías."

Enough enlightenment will develop eyes to see the freedom philosophy. In a word, our task is to increase our own candle power.

The individual who gives light -- regardless on his intellectual level -- is the person who is in an improving state. Anyone should be able to figure out why this is so.

The masses, the hosts of common men, do not conceive any ideas, sound or unsound. They only choose between the ideologies developed by the intellectual leaders of mankind. But their choice is final and determines the course of events. If they prefer bad doctrines, nothing can prevent disaster.

"... But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account."

"I saw an angel in the stone and carved to set it free." - Michel Angelo

"It seems that the more you try to get reality to fit within your comfort zone, the more unprepared you are to deal with a world full of surprise, complexity, and change."

"Relating is how you get real"

"Whether you like arithmetic or not, it is hard to deny the profound effects that numbers have had on the development of human civilization. The evolution of culture, and that of mathematics, has gone hand in hand for the last four millennia. I would hesitate to argue that mathematical innovation drives cultural change, or that cultural needs determine the direction of mathematical progress. But both of those statements contain a grain of truth, because mathematics and culture co-evolve."

"I know grammar by ear only, not by note, not by the rules. A generation ago I knew the rules--knew them by heart, word for word, though not their meanings--and I still know one of them: the one which says--which says--but never mind, it will come back to me presently." - Mark Twain's Autobiography

"When you get free from certain fixed concepts of the way the world is, you find it is far more subtle, and far more miraculous, than you thought it was."

“… Intelligent people will tend to overvalue intelligence, and to suppose that we must owe all the advantages and opportunities that our civilization offers to deliberate design rather that to following traditional rules, and likewise to suppose that we can, by exercising our reason, eliminate any remaining undesired features by still more intelligent reflection, and still more appropriate design and “rational coordination” of our undertakings.”