His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once. - Mark Twain

Morals are an acquirement—like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis—no man is born with them.

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man with his mouth.

Pessimist: the optimist who didn't arrive.