Any book, which is at all important, should be reread immediately

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.

The majority of men... are not capable of thinking, but only of believing, and... are not accessible to reason, but only to authority.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

Man is the only animal who causes pain to others with no other object than wanting to do so.

Genius and madness have something in common: both live in a world that is different from that which exists for everyone else.

A pessimist is an optimist in full possession of the facts.

Religions are like fireflies. They require darkness in order to shine.

Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.

A lot of psychological principles and even medical principles, you see them coming around to what the Bible said hundreds of years ago: a merry heart is good like a medicine.

We don't make music for people to take drugs to, we make music for people to live their life.

I think leadership of any kind requires trust and transparency and voters should demand no less from their political leadership in government.

If you are spending too much, you cut back on spending and you raise your revenues. And that's it.

I want to spend more time with my family, but I'm not sure they want to spend more time with me.

Life has always taken place in a tumult without apparent cohesion, but it only finds its grandeur and its reality in ecstasy and in ecstatic love.

The forests are held cheap after the white pine has been culled out; and the explorers and hunters pray for rain only to clear theatmosphere of smoke.

If I believed in polls, I wouldn't get up in the morning.

Deep within each one of us lies a garden.

I find the constraints of drama actually freeing: It brings everything down to character and action.