From Julie via Janet, the random quotations game: Go here and look through random quotes until you find 5 that you think reflect who you are or what you believe; grab the first five you come to or you'll be there forever looking for a perfect set.

Mine:

I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them.

Jane Austen (1775 - 1817)

When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property.

Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.

Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968)

The public interest is best served by the free exchange of ideas.

Judge John Kane, US District Court

What are the facts? Again and again and again - what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what "the stars fortell", avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable "verdict of history" - what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!

Lazarus Long, from Robert Heinlein's "Time Enough for Love"

There you have: the eternal tension between my desire to help others and my distaste for them in the flesh; an important facet of my view of both politics and academia; a succinct expression of the function of law and the reason we form societies in the first place; an endorsement of Open Access; and the reason I'm a scientist by trade (I know, Heinlein's kind of a jerk, but that doesn't stop him from being right every now and then).