A pun, though despicable in itself, can be the noblest vehicle of an artistic intention by serving as the abbreviation of a wittyview. It can be a social criticism in the form of an epigram.

The streets of Vienna are paved with culture, the streets of other cities with asphalt.

Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time in essays.

Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.

I had a terrible vision: I saw an encyclopedia walk up to a polymath and open him up.

The sound principle of a topsy-turvy lifestyle in the framework of an upside-down world order has stood every test.

An aphorism is never exactly true; it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths.

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.

Newspapers have roughly the same relationship to life as fortune-tellers to metaphysics.

Christianity has enriched the erotic meal with the appetizer of curiosity and spoiled it with the dessert of remorse.

The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are.

Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.

I wake up each and every day with a smile on my face knowing I get to do something musically.

The word responsibility is right, and doing everything you can to educate yourself and learn and be aware.

My films are as much concerned with truth as anything in vérité. Maybe more so.

Our greatest strengths are our greatest weaknesses.

Never work for a company that says people are its most important asset. If you wanted to get a mortgage and you said that your only asset was people you would end up living in a tent.

The tree is happy because it is scarcely sentient; the hard rock is happier still, it feels nothing: there is no pain as great as being alive, no burden heavier than that of conscious life.

The beauty of simplicity is the complexity it attracts.

I was picking up surfing, which I also fell in love with. Then I was like, man, to combine the two [free ride and surfing ] would be perfect.

Wars begin in the minds of men, and in those minds, love andcompassion would have built the defenses of peace.