"A fish stinks first from the head."

Adage about leadership, widely quoted and attributed.

"the following are the possible ways for the listener to react to the communication: 1. he may accept the speaker and accept his statement; 2. he may accept the speaker but reject his statement; 3. he may reject the speaker but accept his statement; 4. he may reject the speaker and reject his statement. A person with what [Michigan State U.’s Milton] Rokeach calls a ‘closed mind’ is able to have only reactions (1) and (4)…

S.I. Hayakawa Language in Thought and Action

"I beg you to believe in the most ridiculous of all superstitions: that humanity is at the centre of the universe, the fulfiller or the frustrator of the grandest dreams of God Almighty. If you can believe that and make others believe it, human beings might stop treating each other like garbage."

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. in a 1970 commencement address according to "Thought du Jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe & Mail June 11, 2003

"tough as goat guts"

Former New York Times editor Howell Raines (of his predecessor James Reston), quoted by Robert Fulford in National Post March 26, 2004

"Know Thyself"

The inscription on the temple at Delphi "ascribed to Apollo himself" according to Juvenal

“He that is not handsome at 20, nor strong at 30, nor rich at 40, nor wise at 50, will never be handsome, strong, rich or wise."

George Herbert "three centuries ago" quoted by Terry O’Neill in British Columbia Report May 18, 1998

"an open mind, to be sure, should be open at both ends, like the foodpipe, and have a capacity for excretion as well as intake."

Northrop Frye The Great Code

"Of course, like Nietzsche, the most famous of God’s assassins, he [Ivan Karamazov] ends in madness. But this is a risk worth running, and, faced with such tragic ends, the essential impulse of the absurd mind is to ask: 'What does that prove?'"

Camus "Absurd Creation" in The Myth of Sisyphus & Other Essays