In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed — they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? — the cuckoo clock. – Graham Greene and Orson Wells, The Third Man

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. – Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854

We are too busy mopping the floor to turn off the faucet. – Author Unknown