Quotations

Quotations are at once mundane and sublime. Whatever the philosophical stance, country, or race of their origin; whether they be serious or whimsical; whether their creators are famous or notorious, controversial or celebrated, quotations are the essence of wisdom refined to a handful of well-chosen words.
They may inspire us to seek an understanding of their creators, to consider our own lives, to laugh, or merely to admire their mastery of language. However we use them, quotations summarize the collective insights of society, a legacy of knowledge passed onward, from one generation to the next.
== Quotes of the Year ==
=== Blaine JadeBlossom (Madara Uchiha) ===
* Democracy is not dying. We know it because we have seen it revive—and grow. We know it cannot die—because it is built on the unhampered initiative of individual men and women joined together in a common enterprise.
* We can gain no lasting peace if we approach it with suspicion and mistrust or with fear. We can gain it only if we proceed with the understanding, the confidence, and the courage which flow from conviction.
=== Chris ShadowShade (Keizou Kaori) ===
* There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.
* The public is a ferocious beast: one must either chain it up or flee from it.
=== Matthew OgreCoin (Gaikou Tsuriman) ===
* It is not possible for any thinking person to live in such a society as our own without wanting to change it.
* Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it. This is an illusion, and one should recognize it as such, but one ought also to stick to one's own world-view, even at the price of seeming old-fashioned: for that world-view springs out of experiences that the younger generation has not had, and to abandon it is to kill one's intellectual roots.
=== Nathaniel OwlEyes ===
* With despair, true optimism begins: the optimism of the man who expects nothing, who knows he has no rights and nothing coming to him, who rejoices in counting on himself alone and in acting alone for the good of all.
* As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.
=== Nicholas ShadowWhisper (Nikku Tsuyoi) ===
* History shows that there are no invincible armies and that there never have been.
* I consider it completely unimportant who in [Arda] will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this—who will count the votes, and how.