If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood... teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eyes.

Without first establishing internal governance, there can be no external campaigns.

-- The ruthlessly effective architect of modern Japan who built the Meiji state's institutions while his more charismatic peers took the glory

My strength uproots mountains, my spirit overshadows the world.

-- The 'Hegemon-King of Western Chu' whose raw military genius made him the most feared commander of ancient China's civil wars

Mountains, rivers, trees — all turned desolate. For ten miles, the wind carries the stench of a fresh battlefield.

-- The Japanese general whose siege of Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War became synonymous with both the terrible cost of modern warfare and the samurai ideal of duty unto death

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom.

-- Hermann Hesse

Either explode in silence, or perish in silence.

-- Lu Xun