Born on September 23rd

"Resolution 1441 does not give anyone the right to an automatic use of force. Russia believes that the Iraqi problem should be regulated by the Security Council, which carries the main responsibility for ensuring international security."

"The resolution has made a real threat of war go away and opens the way for further work in the interests of a political- diplomatic settlement of the situation around Iraq."

"We believe the use of force against Iraq, especially with reference to previous resolutions of the UN Security Council, has no grounds, including legal grounds."

"Imperialism was genuinely popular among Athenians who would expect to share in its profits, even if only indirectly and collectively, and not to have to bear its burdens."

"The Romans had been able to post their laws on boards in public places, confidant that enough literate people existed to read them; far into the Middle Ages, even kings remained illiterate."

"There were theoretical elements in the subjection of women and it is not possible to avoid the conclusion that a large contribution was made to them by the Church. In part this was a matter of its hostile stance towards sexuality."

"Overall, the anarchy was the most creative of all periods of Japanese culture for in it there appeared the greatest landscape painting, the culmination of the skill of landscape gardening and the arts of flower arrangement, and the No drama."

"Nearly everywhere monarchs raised themselves further above the level of the greatest nobles and buttressed their new pretensions to respect and authority with cannons and taxation."

"In the field of love & connection, love is the alignment of two souls speaking a language that words can never fully translate."

"To love is to see the quiet beauty hidden within another's struggles and stand by them. As a statesperson & leader, this is the foundational truth I have observed."

"The greatest force of creation is the warmth we share in the quiet spaces of our connection."

"In the field of motivation & action, do not wait for a clear sky; the most resilient journeys begin in the midst of the storm."

"Success is not a destination of comfort, but the daily practice of stepping into the unknown. As a poet & novelist, this is the foundational truth I have observed."

"Your potential is a fire waiting to be kindled by the friction of consistent effort."

"It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf."

"When all men think alike, no one thinks very much."

"No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people."

"Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon."

"There is nothing so good for the human soul as the discovery that there are ancient and flourishing civilized societies which have somehow managed to exist for many centuries and are still in being though they have had no help from the traveler in solving their problems."

"Unless the reformer can invent something which substitutes attractive virtues for attractive vices, he will fail."

"The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully."

"The study of error is not only in the highest degree prophylactic, but it serves as a stimulating introduction to the study of truth."

"Ideals are an imaginative understanding of that which is desirable in that which is possible."

"The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief... that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart."

"We are all captives of the picture in our head - our belief that the world we have experienced is the world that really exists."

"Where all men think alike, no one thinks very much."

"Social movements are at once the symptoms and the instruments of progress. Ignore them and statesmanship is irrelevant; fail to use them and it is weak."

"Ages when custom is unsettled are necessarily ages of prophecy. The moralist cannot teach what is revealed; he must reveal what can be taught. He has to seek insight rather than to preach."

"The time has come to stop beating our heads against stone walls under the illusion that we have been appointed policeman to the human race."

"In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs."