1. The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don't like their rules, whose would you use?

2. First ask yourself: What is the worst that can happen? Then prepare to accept it. Then proceed to improve on the worst.

3. You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world's happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime.

4. The man who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from the shore.

5. When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion.

6. There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.

7. If you want to gather honey, don't kick over the beehive.

8. If only the people who worry about their liabilities would think about the riches they do possess, they would stop worrying.

9. You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

10. Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no help at all.

11. You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn't exist anywhere except in the mind.

12. There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (1874-1965), was an author, orator, statesman, member of Parliment, cabinet secretary, and the British Prime Minister who lead England through the trying years of World War II. His inspirational speaking held his country together through the 'blitz' of German bombardment, while his negotiating skills held together the shaky alliance between the US and Russia. After the war, he coined the phrase 'iron curtain' to describe Soviet control of eastern Europe. Churchill was knighted for his service and awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 for his book The Second World War.

1. The price of greatness is responsibility.

2. The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.

3. Personally, I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught

4. Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.

5. He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.

6. An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.

7. I have never accepted what many people have kindly said—namely that I inspired the nation. Their will was resolute and remorseless, and as it proved, unconquerable. It fell to me to express it. - on his 80th birthday, address to Parliament 11/30/54

8. Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.

9. If the Almighty were to rebuild the world and asked me for advice, I would have English Channels round every country. And the atmosphere would be such that anything which attempted to fly would be set on fire.

10. No comment is a splendid expression. I am using it again and again.

11. My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.

12. If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time -- a tremendous whack.

13. War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin, keep out of the way till you can.

14. Eating words has never given me indigestion.

15. Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

16. A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

17. It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.

18. Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time.

Einstein (1879-1955), born in Ulm, Germany, was perhaps the greatest theoretical physicists of all time. While teaching at a Swiss university, Einstein worked as a patent clerk in Berne and published six important papers in physics. His work contributed greatly to the understanding of matter and energy, and proposed the now famous relationship between mass and energy, E=Mc2. He is perhaps best known for his Theory of Relativity. Einstein won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922 for his work on the Photoelectric Effect. Leaving Nazi Germany in 1933 to escape increasing anti-semitism, Einstein accepted an invitation to the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, New Jersey, where he spent the rest of his life. Although a pacifist, he was instrumental in convincing President Roosevelt to pursue atomic weapons to hasten the end of World War II.

(Einstein is perhaps the most quoted figure on the internet)

1. The difference between what the most and the least learned people know is inexpressibly trivial in relation to that which is unknown.

2. When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.

3. Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.

4. An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.

5. Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

6. The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms. - from Life Magazine, 1/9/50

7. I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.

8. The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious - the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. - from Living Philosophies, 1931

9. I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.

10. When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute—and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity.

11. Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe.

12. The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

13. If A equals success, then the formula is A equals X plus Y plus Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut. Recalled on his death 18 Apr 55

14. A photograph never grows old. You and I change, people change all through the months and years, but a photograph always remains the same. How nice to look at a photograph of mother or father taken many years ago. You see them as you remember them. But as people live on, they change completely. That is why I think a photograph can be kind.

Eisenhower (1890-1969) was born in Denison, Texas. He graduated from West Point in 1915, became a captain during World War I, and served under General Douglas MacArthur in the 1930's. After US entry into World War II he was selected as commander of US forces in Europe, and led invasions of North Africa and Italy. He planned and led the Allied invasion of Europe. After the war he succeeded General George C. Marshall as Army Chief of Staff, then retired to become president of Columbia University. In 1951 he returned to service as supreme commander of NATO, and in 1952 'Ike' ran for election and became the 34th US President.

1. I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

2. An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.

3. Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America. - from his Inaugural address 1/20/53

4. Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the corn field.- from an address at Peoria, IL 9/25/56

5. The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.

6. Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.

7. The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield. - 3/17/54

8. Neither a wise nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.- from a Presidential campaign speech, Time Magazine, 10/6/52

9. Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

10. The clearest way to show what the rule of law means to us in everyday life is to recall what has happened when there is no rule of law. - from an address on the first observance of Law Day, 5/5/58

11. I have only one yardstick by which I test every major problem - and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?

12. Unlike presidential administrations, problems rarely have terminal dates. - from his State of the Union address 1/12/61

13. Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. - from an address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, 4/16/53

14. The sergeant is the Army.

Ford (1863 - 1947). born near Dearborn, Michigan, was an American industrialist without equal. After starting work as a machinist, and becoming chief engineer at Thomas Edison's Edison Illuminating Co., he went on to found the Ford Motor Company in 1903. While he was not the first to invent an automobile, Ford was the first to make use of assembly lines - allowing cars to be mass produced at affordable prices. Over 15 million of his original "Model T" cars were sold, and the industry he created has had a pronounced effect on the face of the planet.

1. History is more or less bunk.

2. Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.

3. Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.

4. Whether you think you can or think you can't -- you are right.

5. It is not the employer who pays wages -- he only handles the money. It is the product that pays wages.

6. A bore is a person who opens his mouth and puts his feats in it.

7. If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.

8. Business is never so healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching for what it gets.

9. The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life.

10. There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.

11. A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business.

12. Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.

Franklin (1706-1790), born in Boston, Massachusetts, was an American author, printer, inventor, scientist, publisher, printer, and diplomat. He was truly a man of many talents. Franklin was known for his wit and humor, much of which was published in Poor Richard's Almanac, and for his proof that lightning was a form of electricity by experimenting with a kite in a thunderstorm. He played a pivotal role in the revolutionary and formative years of the United States. He helped draft the Declaration of Independence in 1776, represented the US in France during the war, and was involved in negotiating the peace with Britain in 1781. He was a stabilizing figure at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Franklin founded the world's first public fire department, the first public lending library, and what later became the University of Pennsylvania.

1. Wise men don't need advice. Fools won't take it.

2. Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

3. The world is full of fools and faint hearts; and yet everyone has courage enough to bear the misfortunes, and wisdom enough to manage the affairs, of his neighbor.

4. Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain, and most fools do.

5. Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a big ship.

6. Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he will never be disappointed.

7. Wealth is not his who has it but his who enjoys it.

8. Creditors have better memories than debtors.

9. He was so learned that he could name a horse in nine languages; so ignorant that he bought a cow to ride on.

10. If a man could have half his wishes he could double his troubles.

11. Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.

12. Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his passions. Who is rich? He who is content. Who is that? Nobody.

13. He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.