Peter Singer

“Why is it, Caesar, that there’s always a man like Lucius Metellus?” “If there were not, Antonius, this world might work better. Though if this world worked better, there’d be no place in it for men like me,” said Caesar.”
― Colleen McCullough, Caesar

“Since everything which exists or happens for a man exists only in his consciousness and happens for it alone, the most essential thing for a man is the constitution of this consciousness, which is in most cases far more important than the circumstances which go to form its contents.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life

“This book collects what outsiders have said about Australians and Australian characteristics and what Australians have said about themselves. In some quarters this will be regarded as an unfashionable book because it believes that there is such a thing as an Australian national character.”
― John Hirst, The Australians: Insiders and Outsiders on the National Character since 1770

“All the pride and pleasure of the world, mirrored in the dull consciousness of a fool, are poor indeed compared with the imagination of Cervantes writing his Don Quixote in a miserable prison.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life