All is forgiven to kings and popes. History grants them immunity, even a full pardon, even when they admit their crimes and glory in them.

Corrupt men are always liars. Lies are their instruments, their pleasure, their solace. In time they come to believe their lies, or rather to half-believe them.

Fragmentation occurs when a civilization is in decline.

Uncorrupted man, with God's blessing, advances across the fields of the universe as though he were walking down a country lane.

The United States is dangerously close to being a plutocracy. A third of the private wealth is owned by less than 5 percent of the population.

The small Hitlers are around us every day.

It is no more rational to have lawyers in positions of power than it would be to have garbage collectors in positions of power. And in human terms garbage collectors would be preferable.

Conquest, tyranny, treachery, and the clash of cultures bring about corrupt societies, and so does old age. Sometimes the five faces of corruption are visible at the same time.

The corrupt, when found out, become especially good moralists.

A totalitarian dictatorship cannot explain; it can only suppress.

It is precisely when we help one another that we gain our victories over corruption, but the victory is assured only when we help one another with all our strength.

I think of how each person in a marriage owes it to the other to find individual happiness, even in a shared life. That this is the only way to grow together, instead of apart.

Bury the dead. Say Robinson Crusoe was true to life. Well then Friday buried him. Every Friday buries a Thursday if you come to look at it.

Human vocabulary is still not capable, and probably never will be, of knowing, recognizing, and communicating everything that can be humanly experienced and felt.

There are days when I still want to be able to do what I want when I want, but there's also something wonderful about being secure.

Waste today, want tomorrow.

Life is too short to nurse one's misery. Hurry across the lowlands so that you may spend more time on the mountain tops.

God loves an idle rainbow, no less than laboring seas.

I don't have a publicist. I don't go to events or self-promote, or endorse things, or whatever it is people are meant to do in that world.

Pro Publica distorts the relationship between organizations and their consultants.

"It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever" he said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?"