"Every man desires to obtain additional wealth with as little sacrifice as possible."

Nassau Senior in 1836, quoted by Stephen Leacock in "What is Left of Adam Smith?" in On the Front Line of Life
 

"America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand."

Harry S. Truman (displayed on the hoarding around a construction site in Philadelphia Sept. 12 2016
 

"Things work out best for those who make the best of how things work out."

Legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, quoted by Jeff Hayden on www.inc.com

"Canada is free and freedom is its nationality"

Sir Wilfrid Laurier, quoted in Brian Lee Crowley Fearful Symmetry

“Do you know that disease and death must needs overtake us, no matter what we are doing?... What do you wish to be doing when it overtakes you?... If you have anything better to be doing when you are overtaken, get to work on that."

Epictetus, quoted in Jon Winokur Zen to Go

“It is natural to civilised man to go back upon his past, and to be grateful for all profit he can gain from the study of his own development. So we may be certain that the claim of Greece and Rome to our eternal gratitude will never cease to be asserted, and their right to teach us still what we could have learnt nowhere else will never be successfully disputed.”

W. Warde Fowler Rome (written November 1911)

“It takes very little to govern good people. Very little. And bad people cant be governed at all. Or if they could I never heard of it."

Sheriff Ed Tom Bell in Cormac McCarthy No Country for Old Men

"Looking for fish? Don’t climb a tree."

Chinese proverb (according to "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe and Mail March 31 2011