Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow
 domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the
 dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought
        and action--
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

      -- Rabindranath Tagore

A couple of hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin shared with the world the secret of his success. 
Never leave that till tomorrow, he said, which you can do today. This is the man who discovered electricity. 
You think more people would listen to what he had to say. I don't know why we put things off, 
but if I had to guess, I'd have to say it has a lot to do with fear. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, 
sometimes the fear is just of making a decision, because what if you're wrong? What if you're making a mistake 
you can't undo? The early bird catches the worm. A stitch in time saves nine. He who hesitates is lost. We can't 
pretend we hadn't been told. We've all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning 
us about wasted time, heard the damn poets urging us to seize the day. Still sometimes we have to see for ourselves. 
We have to make our own mistakes. We have to learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today's possibility under 
tomorrow's rug until we can't anymore. Until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin really 
meant. That knowing is better than wondering, that waking is better than sleeping, and even the biggest failure, 
even the worst, beat the hell out of never trying. 

Meredith Grey

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides
By the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men.
Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will,
Shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness,
For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children.
And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger
Those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers.
And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.


      -- Samual Jackson (Pulp Fiction)

Breathes there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
   "This is my own, my native land!"
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd
   From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung.

        -- Sir Walter Scott

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

        -- Rudyard Kipling