Some genius can be recognized instantly, but my point was, whatever. Here's my opener anyway, and again I want a whole paragraph:

"He who despises himself respects himself because he despises himself." 

All art is quite useless. 

Almost every developing species had a creation myth buried somewhere in its past, even if by the time they�d become space-faring it was no more than a quaint and dusty irrelevance (though, granted, some were downright embarrassing). Talking utter drivel about thunderclouds having sex with the sun, lonely old sadists inventing something to amuse themselves with, a big fish spawning the stars, planets, moons and your own ever-so-special People � or whatever other nonsense had wandered into the most likely feverish mind of the enthusiast who had come up with the idea in the first place � at least showed you were interested in trying provide an explanation for the world around you, and so was generally held to be a promising first step towards coming up with the belief system that provably worked and genuinely did produce miracles: reason, science and technology. 

For me the glass is always half full, probably because my glass has always been half empty. 

For me the glass is always half empty, probably because my glass has always been half full.

errr.. or the opposite .... :P 

That depends on your point of view. 

No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.
--Richard Feynman 

The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do more, and you are not yet decrepit enough to turn them down.
--T. S. Eliot 

I was sitting in a chair in the patent office at Bern when all of sudden a thought occurred to me: If a person falls freely he will not feel his own weight. I was startled. This simple thought made a deep impression on me. It impelled me toward a theory of gravitation.
--Albert Einstein 

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.
-Gandhi 

Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid.
--Jesus of Nazareth 

Un peuple qui trafique de ses enfants est encore plus condamnable que l�acheteur: ce n�goce d�montre notre sup�riorit�; ce qui se donne un ma�tre �tait n� pour en avoir.
--Voltaire 

All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.
--Leo Tolstoy 

Caccianli i ciel per non esser men belli,
n� lo profondo inferno li riceve,
ch'alcuna gloria i rei avrebber d'elli.
--Dante Alighieri 

The basis of a democratic state is liberty.
--Aristotle