The purpose of life is not to be happy – but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you have lived at all. – Leo Rosten
I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong. – Leo Rosten
Humor is, I think, the subtlest and chanciest of literary forms. It is surely not accidental that there are a thousand novelists, essayists, poets or journalists for each humorist. It is a long, long time between James Thurbers. – Leo Rosten
A world war – God forbid! – will leave only smoldering ashes as a mute testimony of a human race whose folly led inexorably to untimely death. Yet there are those who sincerely feel that disarmament is an evil and international negotiation is an abominable waste of time. – Martin Luther King,Jr., Strength to Love, 1963
But while so many white Americans are unaware of conditions inside the ghetto, there are very few ghetto dwellers who are unaware of the life outside. The television sets bombard them day by day with the opulence of the larger society. – Martin Luther King,Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967