We say a lot of things between us at Independent Thinking but sometimes you come across a line that you just wish you could have said first.

Here are a few of our favourites. Some funny, some clever, some intensely moving. Feel free to take them and pretend they're your own:

All my life I give you nothing and still you want more

On an invitation by artists Gilbert and George

Life's hard. It's harder when you're stupid

Policeman to person being apprehended

Without an understanding of what the mind was designed to do in the environment in which we evolved, the unnatural activity called formal education is unlikely to succeed

Stephen Pinker - How the Mind Works

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood: who strives valiantly, who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat

Theodore Roosevelt, address at the Sorbonne, Paris, 23rd April 1910

Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me, either - leave me the hell alone

Anon

Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes

Anon

Don't squat with your spurs on

Anon

Any coward can sit in his home and criticise a pilot for flying into a mountain in fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in bed... What kind of man would live when there is no daring? And is life so dear that we should blame men for dying in adventure? Is there a better way to die?

Charles Lindbergh

All men dream but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind awake to find it was only vanity.

The dreamers of the day are dangerous men for they act out their dreams with open eyes to make it possible

TE Lawrence

The longer I live the more I realise the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you …we are in charge of our attitudes

Charles Swindoll

Never hire the people with exceptionally high grades at university and secondary school... If they're not screwed up by the age of 23 they're not going to do anything interesting by the time they're 83

Tom Peters, Business Guru speaking in London in 2004

Our program on a nation can be no swifter than our program in education

John F Kennedy

It's better to seek forgiveness than ask permission

Tom Peters

When a man knows deep in his bones what is right, and keeps acting on it, he avoids the trap of compromise – he remains incorruptible

Leo Burnett

Education is an imaginative act of hope

Anon

A dullard is someone who looks up a fact, reads it then closes the book

Philip Jose Farmer

I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone

Quote from the inventor of C++ (much-used computer language)

Steven Wright is the man who once said: "I woke up one morning and all of my stuff had been stolen and replaced by exact duplicates." I think it was he who also said that he spent time on window ledges because he was scared of widths. Here are some more examples of his nowhere-near-the-box thinking:

1 - I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.

2 - Borrow money from pessimists -- they don't expect it back.

3 - Half the people you know are below average.

4 - 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.

5 - 82.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

6 - A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.

7 - A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

8 - If you want the rainbow, you got to put up with the rain.

9 - All those who believe in psychokinesis, raise my hand.

10 - The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse get's the cheese.

11 - I almost had a psychic girlfriend.....but she left me before we met.

12 - OK, so what's the speed of dark?

13 - How do you tell when you're out of invisible ink?

14 - If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.

15 - Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

16 - When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.

17 - Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.

18 - Hard work pays off in the future, laziness pays off now.

19 - I intend to live forever......so far, so good.

20 - If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?

21 - Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

22 - What happens if you get scared half to death twice?

23 - My mechanic told me, "I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder."

24 - Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?

25 - If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.

26 - A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.

27 - Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

28 - The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.

29 - To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.

30 - The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.

31 - The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up.

32 - The colder the x-ray table, the more of your body is required to be on it.

33 - Everyone has a photographic memory; some just don't have film.

34 - If your car could travel at the speed of light, would your headlights work?

Steven Wright

And more seriously, this, taken from an anti-government website from Zimbabwe

You can’t be neutral on a moving train. In this world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy? I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world. There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.

Looking at this catalogue of huge surprises, it's clear that the struggle for justice should never be abandoned because of the apparent overwhelming power of those who have the guns and the money and who seem invincible in their determination to hold on to it. That apparent power has, again and again, proved vulnerable to human qualities less measurable than bombs and dollars: moral fervour, determination, unity, organization, sacrifice, wit, ingenuity, courage, and patience.

Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent society. We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don't "win," there is fun and fulfilment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, and kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvellous victory.

Howard Zinn - historian, playwright, and social activist

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