"Some people consider any form of sex education to be child abuse, and many do not feel that children should have any information at all about adult sexual activities. ...How are we to teach our children to say 'no' to an abusive adult if we are not frank about what it is that they should say no to?"

"So we are proud to reclaim the word "slut" as a term of approval, even endearment. To us, a slut is a person of any gender who has the courage to lead life according to the radical proposition that sex is nice and pleasure is good for you."

"Sex is for pleasure, a complete and worthwhile goal in and of itself. People have sex because it feels very good, and then they feel good about themselves."

"Myth #3: Loving someone makes it OK to control his behavior."

"Joe was very possessive. I was perfectly faithful. He would beat me, screaming imprecations, 'You slut!' when another man looked at me. After I left, I decided he was right — I am a slut, I want to be a slut, I will never promise monogamy again. After all, why would anyone care who I fucked? I will never be a piece of property again, no matter how valuable that property is considered. Joe made a feminist of me. A feminist slut."

"It is amazing to us to think ... that most people in our culture have never had a chance to watch another person enjoy sex. No wonder we worry so much about our appearance."

""Easy": Is there, we wonder, some virtue in being difficult?"

"A slut shares their sexuality the way philanthropists shares their money: because they have a lot of it to share, because it makes them happy to share it, because sharing makes the world a better place."

"A ring around the finger does not cause a nerve block to the genitals."

"We believe that it is fundamentally a radical political act to deprivatize sex. So much oppression in our culture is based on shame about sex: the oppression of women, of cultural minorities, oppression in the name of the (presumably asexual) family, oppression of sexual minorities. We are all oppressed. We have all been taught, one way or another, that our desires, our bodies, our sexualities, are shameful. What better way to defeat oppression than to get together in communities and celebrate the wonders of sex?"

"We are particularly in favor of multiple partners having a chance to meet each other, or at least hear about each other, to dispel our self-created mythology that the other person is younger, thinner, sexier, etc. You might be surprised, when you meet your lover's lover, to find the experience downright reassuring."

"Truth and understanding are not such wares as to be monopolized and traded in by tickets and statutes and standards. We must not think to make a staple commodity of all the knowledge in the land, to mark and license it like our broadcloth and our woolpacks."

"Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?"

"It is not possible for man to sever the wheat from the tares, the good fish from the other fry; that must be the Angels' ministry at the end of mortal things. Yet if all cannot be of one mind — as who looks they should be? — this doubtless is more wholesome, more prudent, and more Christian, that many be tolerated, rather than all compelled."

"Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties."

"Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks. Methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam."

"Where there is much desire to learn, here of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making."

"Lords and commons of England, consider what Nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors: a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point, the highest that human capacity can soar to."

"He who thinks we are to pitch our tent here, and have attained the utmost prospect of reformation that the mortal glass wherein we contemplate can show us, till we come to beatific vision, that man by this very opinion declares that he is yet far short of truth."

"There is yet behind of what I purposed to lay open, the incredible loss and detriment that this plot of licensing puts us to; more than if some enemy at sea should stop up all our havens and ports and creeks, it hinders and retards the importation of our richest merchandise, truth."

"A man may be a heretic in the truth, and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy."

"I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat."

"Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. 'Tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse."

"Who shall silence all the airs and madrigals that whisper softness in chambers?"

"We should be wary...what persecution we raise against the living labours of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom, and if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre; whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at that ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself, slays an immortality rather than a life."

"Eyesight is of no avail if the heart be blind."

"A good name is the proudest of pedigrees."

"Whose heart is narrow has a broad tongue."

"Wisdom is the finest pedigree."

"What is the worst sickness? A bad neighbour."

"Pity the honorable man despised, the rich man beggared and the wise man fallen among fools!"

"Moral preachings will avail nothing to the unintelligent."

"Two things will never mix: a good heart and stinginess."

"There is no wealth like health."

"Humiliate yourself so that God may raise you up!"

"The eye of the needle is not too narrow for two friends and the vastness of the world not enough for two enemies."

"This book is dedicated to Andrew Carnegie whose motto was "Anything in life worth having is worth working for!" and to THE MOST IMPORTANT LIVING PERSON."

"One of the surest ways to find happiness for yourself is to devote your energies toward making someone else happy. Happiness is an elusive, transitory thing. And if you set out for it, you willl find it evasive. But if you try to bring happiness to someone else, then it comes to you."

"There is very little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference! The little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative."

"The price of ignorance is sin, sickness and death."

"You live longer with a Magnificent Obsession!"

"A Magnificent Obsession will conquer despite the obstacles that stand in its way!"

"Be a part of a great cause!"

"Share that which is good and desirable and withhold that which is bad and undesirable."

"Your most preciously valued possessions and your greatest powers are often necessarily invisible and intangible. No one can take them. You and you alone can share them. The more you share, the more you will have."

"No matter who you are you can have a Magnificent Obsession. Every living person can help others by sharing a part of himself. You don't have to be rich or powerful to develop a Magnificent Obsession. Regardless of who you are, or what you have been, you can create inside yourself a burning desire to be helpful to others."

"Develop an obsession — a Magnificent Obsession — to help others. Share yourself without expecting a reward, payment, or commendation. And above all else — keep your good turn a secret. And, if you do this, you will set in motion the powers of a universal law. For, try as you will to avoid payment for your good deed — blessings and rewards will be showered upon you."

"I feel healthy! I feel happy! I feel terrific!"

"You are what you think. But what do you think? How orderly are your thought processes? How straight is your thinking?"

"Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement."