Mary Harris "Mother" Jones

Whatever the fight, don't be ladylike.

I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I said if he had stolen a railroad, he would be a United States Senator.

Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living!

Tina Fey

So my unsolicited advice to women in the workplace is this. When faced with sexism or ageism or lookism or really aggressive Buddhism, ask yourself the following question: "Is this person in between me and what I want to do?" If the answer is no, ignore it and move on. Your energy is better used doing your work and outpacing people that way. Then, when you're in charge, don't hire the people who were jerky to you.

--from Bossypants (2011)

Stephen Vincent Benét

Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.

Kyle Crichton

Life's a pretty precious and wonderful thing. You can't sit down and let it lap around you...you have to plunge into it. And you can't save it, you can't store it up, you can't horde it in a vault. You've got to taste it. You've got to use it. The more you use, the more you have...that's the miracle of it! 

--from The Happiest Millionaire (1956) 

David McCullough

There's no such thing, no such thing. We're all the products of the teachers, the parents, the friends, the rivals that have shaped us along the way.

--on explaining his disbelief in the idea of the self-made man

As revealed in a fortune cookie

The difficulties of life are intended to make us better, not bitter.

DK

Much writing remains;
Deadlines approach with grim speed.
Think before knocking.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

We are as happy as people can be, without making themselves ridiculous, and might be even happier; but, as a matter of taste, we choose to stop short at this point.

--in a letter to his sister about his wife