Focus more on your desire than on your doubt, and the dream will take care of itself. - Mark Twain

The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive ... but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetic in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian religion was born.

I never had the courage to talk across a long, narrow room. I should be at the end of the room facing the audience. . . . You ought never to have any part of the audience behind you; you never can tell what they are going to do.

Anyone who can only think of one way to spell a word obviously lacks imagination.