To the extent that quotations can guide a life, the following are the one's from which I seek guidance.  Taken together, they are my "pillars of wisdom", by which I try to order my existence.  Despite the fact that an academic cv is posted elsewhere in this website, if you wish to learn anything about the author, I suggest that you start here.  (Even if you do not, you might want to read on anyway:  after all, there are some wonderful quotes.)
 

Carpe diem.

      Horace
 

Let justice be done though the heaven's fall.

     William Watson (1601)
 

Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.

     George Santayana
 

You can't possibly know where you're going if you don't know where you've come from.

     Ken Burns
 

A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.

     Lao-tzu
 

Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords.

     Theodore Roosevelt
 

All men who feel any joy in battle know what it is like when the wolf rises in the heart.

     Theodore Roosevelt
 

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.

     Lillian Hellman
 

Don't get mad, get even.

     JFK
 

Nothing personal, just business.

     Michael Corleone
 

Obstinacy in a bad cause is but constancy in a good.

     Sir Thomas Browne
 

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

     William Shakespeare (Julius Caesar)
 

Know your own mind--and make sure the other fellow knows it too!

     Lord Curzon
 

We do not, we cannot certainly know what we are, or where we are going.  But if we believe nobly about ourselves, we have a chance of living nobly.  If we believe basely, base we shall certainly become.

     J. A. Froude
 

Years do not make sages, they make old men.

     Chinese fortune cookie
 

There is always a choice.  We usually tell ourselves there is no choice to be comfortable with decisions we have already made.

     Delenn (Babylon 5)
 

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

     Old proverb
 

What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

     Old proverb
 

The steps a man fears most are the ones which have to be taken.

     Bernard Cornwall, Sharpe's Enemy
 

First the Nazis went after the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did not object.  Then they went after the Catholics, but I was not a Catholic, so I did not object.  Then they went after the trade-unionists, but I was not a trade-unionist, so I did not object.  Then they came after me, and there was no one left to object.

     Martin Niemoller
 

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 on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe 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 sixy second's 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 (If)