On average The Queen appoints 70 Knights a year, but only 15 Dames.

"It's not what happens to you, but what you do with it."
- Rick Hansen

monkey

"We are just an advanced breed of monkey, on a minor planet of a very average star."
- Stephen Hawking

Mystery

"Mystery is perhaps the greatest gift given to our species."
- Einstein

"I like an actor who disappears into (his or her) role."
- Willem Dafoe

"I can't go back to yesterday, because I was a different person then."
- Lewis Carroll

"Whatever role I take, I want people to be in my shoes."
- Michael Caine

VALENCIA, Spain—Hemingway getting ready to go out to cover the Battle of Teruel, December 1937.

control

"I left the department store business because I couldn't stand not controlling my own product, from how it's manufactured to how it's sold."

- Mickey Drexler, CEO of Gap

"You want to know the secret to building a brand? You must have the finest quality [inputs] available, and then you're in the reorder business, not the selling business."

- John Paul DeJoria

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do."  

"He lies not because it's in his interest, he lies because it's in his nature."
- Helmut Sonnenfeldt on Henry Kissinger

"There's no such thing as a pure introvert or a pure extrovert; such men would live in lunatic asylums."
- Carl Jung

"Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation."

- Noam Chomsky

computer programming

HEMA is a Dutch department store. The first store opened on November 4, 1926, in Amsterdam. Now there are 150 stores all over the Netherlands. HEMA also has stores in Belgium, Luxemburg, and Germany. HEMA was recently sold to British investment company Lion Capital. The product page is innovative:

http://producten.hema.nl

(Hat tip: RJ)

    If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you've done and whoever you were and throw them away.
    The more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you, the harder it is to continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times, artists have to say, 'Bye. I have to go. I'm going crazy and I'm getting out of here.' And they go and hibernate somewhere. Maybe later they re-emerge a little differently.
- Steve Jobs

"The spirit now wills his own will, and he who had been lost to the world now conquers the world."
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

"I learned the truth of the Zen saying that if you are willing to travel around the world to meet a teacher, one will appear next door."
- Steve Jobs quoted by Walter Isaacson 

"Let's face it — you are, I am, let's face it, we're dull. Can you tell me one thing that was said or done by anyone here tonight that was funny, startling, or imaginative?"
- James Mason in 1956's Bigger Than Life as Ed Avery

"Sometimes I'll read music then listen to a book on tape."
- Steven Wright

"If all the insects were to disappear from earth, within 50 years all life would end. If all human beings disappeared from earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish."

- Jonas Salk

"All children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as you grow up."
- Pablo Picasso

"The best for the most for the least. That's why we got into mass production."
- Ray Eames

Cheers

"[T]he plain fact is that" alcohol "makes other people, and indeed life itself, a good deal less boring. Kingsley grasped this essential fact very early in life, and (so to speak) never let go of the insight," - Christopher Hitchens [1949-2011]. But there are few people as boring as a drunk when you're sober.

"Good business is the best art."
- Andy Warhol

"When you have eliminated all that is impossible, whatever remains must be the truth, no matter how improbable."

- Sherlock Holmes

poetry

"The more you can boil something down, the better."
- Calvin Trillin

"If you ever want to run for the Presidency of the United States, you have to be prepared to strip naked and take a bath at high-noon in the busiest intersection of your town."
- Attributed to Fred Dutton, JFK Advisor