'No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.'

'We are on the move now ... Like an idea whose time has come, not even the marching of mighty armies can halt us. We are moving to the land of freedom ...'

- Martin Luther King Jr. at the conclusion of the five-day, 54-mile march

'Keep working on a plan. Make no little plans. Make the biggest one you can think of, and spend the rest of your life carrying it out.'

- President Harry Truman (1884-1972)

A quote by Howard Hughes

"Do the impossible, because almost everyone has told me my ideas are merely fantasies."

'Hearts are the strongest when they beat in response to noble ideals.'

- American diplomat Ralph Bunche (1904–1971)

'An idea is salvation by imagination.'

- US architect Frank Lloyd Wright

'How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.' - Anne Frank

'All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost.'

- "The Lord of the Rings" author JRR Tolkien (1892-1973)

'If the time is not ripe, we have to ripen the time.'

- Activist Dorothy Height (1912-2010)

'Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.'

- Inventor Thomas Edison (1847 - 1931)

'Organize, agitate, educate, must be our war cry.'

- Suffragist Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906)

'If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.'

- Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)

'No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.'

-Charles Dickens (1812-1870), in "Our Mutual Friend"

'Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.'

- Senator Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968)

'Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.'

- Harper Lee from "To Kill a Mockingbird"

The long-tail influence of Thoreau's 'Civil Disobedience'

His essay "Civil Disobedience" laid out both a practical and a moral plan for resisting unjust governments, inspiring civil rights leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as anti-war anarchists like Emma Goldman and literary figures like Leo Tolstoy.

'Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.'

- Author James Baldwin (1924–1987)

'Knowledge will forever govern ignorance.'

- US President James Madison (1751-1836)

'The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win.'

- Roger Bannister (1929-2018)

'I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.'

- "Superman" actor Christopher Reeve (1952 - 2004)

A quote by Herman Melville

"Whoever is not in the possession of leisure can hardly be said to possess independence."

'Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul—and sings the tunes without the words—and never stops at all.'

- Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

'Happiness depends more upon the internal frame of a persons own mind—than on the externals in the world.'

- George Washington (1732-1799)

'A word after a word after a word is power.'

- Author Margaret Atwood (1939-present)

Before Dawkins, other biologists proposed the power of mutating ideas

Nobel Prize winner Jacques Monod proposed, “Ideas have retained some of the properties of organisms. Like them, they tend to perpetuate their structure and to breed; they too can fuse, recombine, segregate their content; indeed they too can evolve, and in this evolution selection must surely play an important role.”

Writer Christopher Hitchens on why Orwell matters

In this 2008 segment with NPR, the author of "Why Orwell Matters" discusses his admiration for the author and fields questions from callers. Hitchens notes that anyone can write about tyranny, but that Orwell's brilliance is in exploring why people "are so keen to obey."

Who said 'rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God'?

As a brief, punchy statement rejecting unjust authority, "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God" became widely adopted during the American Revolution. The phrase is often misattributed to Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, the latter of whom used it on his personal seal. This fact-checked article dives into the history of the phrase, claiming it was first used in 1770 in an epitaph for an English judge. Read more here.

'One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world'

- Activist and author Malala Yousafzai (1997-present)

'Keep Calm and Carry On' was long-forgotten World War II propaganda

The British Ministry of Information developed the stoic phrase ahead of German attacks at the start of World War II in 1939. It was never officially released on posters and then lay dormant until 2000, when one of the remaining posters was discovered at a bookstore in the UK. It has since been adapted into countless memes.

'It's the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.'

- Legendary boxer Muhammad Ali (1942–2016)

Delacroix's 'Liberty Leading the People' depicts a scene from the French Revolution

The massive painting, at over 8 feet by 10 feet, is striking, especially considering the warfare being depicted. Paintings of this size were usually reserved for historical events, but Delacroix was portraying what the people of Paris experienced just a few months earlier.

Washington's military acumen and political judgment were crucial to the Continental Army's success

In this podcast, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Rick Atkinson argues that Washington's endurance, strategic communication, political judgment, and ability to elevate capable subordinates proved decisive, in sharp contrast to the failures of British leadership during the war.

In a 2012 poll, Brits named Washington as the kingdom's greatest military enemy

The poll by the UK's National Army Museum ranked Washington above Irish independence hero Michael Collins, France's Napoleon Bonaparte, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

'Pioneering is never done in front of cheerleaders urging on a roaring grandstand of popular approval.'

- "Star Trek" actor George Takei (1937-present)

'Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an aesthetic end.'

- Author James Joyce (1882 -1941)

'I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.'

- Actress and singer Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992)

'I ought to be jealous of the tower. She is more famous than I am.'

- Gustave Eiffel (1832–1923)

Candide's 'Voltaire' satirized blind optimism

The French philosopher’s most famous work, published in 1759, cataloged the journey of its titular hero, who was guided by a crackpot philosopher and the belief that optimism was the solution to life’s problems, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Camus won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1957 for his philosophical essays and fiction

The philosopher and novelist was one of the youngest writers to win the award, at just 44. In his acceptance speech, he spoke on the role of an artist in a world that seemed increasingly bleak. "Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world," he said. "Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself."

'The good ole days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems.'

- Billy Joel (1949-present)

'In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.'

- Isaac Asimov

The word 'dystopia' was first used in 1868

John Stuart Mill, an English philosopher, economist, and politician, uttered the word at the House of Commons while criticizing what he considered to be the government’s insufficient land policy for the Irish, saying, “What is commonly called Utopian is something too good to be practicable; but what they appear to favour is too bad to be practicable.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1941 speech framed World War II as a global fight for universal rights

Eleven months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt outlined four fundamental freedoms that, in his words, people "everywhere in the world" ought to enjoy—speech, worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes championed the idea of speech as a 'marketplace of ideas'

In his landmark dissent in Abrams v. United States, Justice Holmes argued that the best way to combat harmful ideas is through open competition—a principle that became foundational to modern First Amendment law.

Enlightenment ideals of reason informed the foundation of the Revolution

From the 17th to 19th centuries, an intellectual movement took place in Europe and its colonies that emphasized reason over authority. Following the Scientific Revolution, thinkers like Descartes, Kant, and Locke sought to explain the world in rational—rather than religious—terms. The movement caused a paradigm shift in how societies are organized and how people perceive themselves.

The man behind the dark novel abandoned on the floor of the Bastille

As tensions rose in the days before the French Revolution of 1789, Donatien Alphonse François attempted to fan the flames by shouting at passersby about false horrors happening inside the Bastille where he was imprisoned. This 39-minute podcast...

Sartre eventually denounced communism

The French philosopher was a long-time ardent supporter of communism and the USSR. He finally spoke out against the movement with the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, saying that the move was "made possible by 12 years of terror and imbecility."

'The minute you start talking about what you're going to do if you lose, you have lost.'

- Diplomat George Shultz (1920–2021)

A bankrupt flour merchant in debtor’s prison helped inspire the Erie Canal

In 1807, Jesse Hawley, jailed for debt after struggling with high transport costs, published essays under the pen name “Hercules.” His writings laid out the canal’s route and benefits, galvanizing support for the project.

The standing ovation comes from an ancient Roman military tradition

Ovation is derived from the Latin for “I rejoice” and was a ceremonial salute to military generals who'd been victorious in battle.

Hamilton proposed one of the strongest visions of national government

At the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Hamilton advanced a plan modeled partly on Britain's system, calling for a powerful national executive and for senators to serve for life (with good behavior)—proposals that failed to gain widespread support.