A mental stain can neither be blotted out by the passage of time nor washed away by any waters.

Politicians are not born; they are excreted.

Poor is the nation that has no heroes, but poorer still is the nation that having heroes, fails to remember and honor them.

It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own.

Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goest out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead.

We learn nothing from history except that we learn nothing from history.

It is not enough to acquire wisdom, it is necessary to employ it.

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.

Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

True patience is grounded in wisdom and compassion.

My job is to throw passes and be a leader.

My mother kept alive the best part for my sister and me. At the same time, she's always been someone who's very straight and solid, which wasn't that -common in families with "'68er" parents.

Writers seem to me to be people who need to retire from social life and do a lot of thinking about what's happened - almost to calm themselves.

I want my kids to have a deep, inner feeling that it's alright to be happy, that you don't have to be constantly manufacturing problems that you don't really have.

The only wealth in this world is children, more than all the money, power on earth.

My book has a very simple surface, but there are layers of irony and paradox all the way through it.

I like Kurt Cobain. [He] is like my dream boyfriend.

How would you have done things differently if you were not afraid?

The person who praises God is on the tracks of justice.