Don't assume that a species is intelligent because it produces intelligent individuals.

It is not faith per se that creates the problem; it is conviction, the notion that one cannot be wrong, that opposing views are necessarily invalid and may even be intolerable.

The uplifters are forever running around telling blockheads they would do better if they would believe in themselves. But they already do. That is why they are blockheads.

The measure of a civilization is in the courage, not of its soldiers, but of its bystanders.

... the truth is that when your people don't tell you what you need to know, it's a failure of leadership.

We could never know who we truly were until we heard the whispers of the stars.

Boundaries have no existence save on charts or in small minds. Nature does not draw lines.

Man has always seen himself the peak of creation. The part of the universe that thinks. The purpose for it all. It's no doubt a gratifying view, but the universe may have a different opinion.

Show me what a people admire, and I will tell you everything about them that matters.

Universal deities ... never seem to smile. Not in any culture. What's the point of having omnipotence if you don't enjoy it?

The problem is that too often the only people who can act don't want change. Power doesn't so much corrupt as it breeds conservatism.

Intellectuals that approach me, only serve to feeding my intellectualism. Imaginists that approach me, only serve to enhancing my Imaginism. It's impossible to feed my I, for I am the Greatest 'I AM.

Political parties serve to keep each other in check one keenly watching the other.

There is a time to take a stand and there is a time to take your leave.

Life is a thing that mutates without warning, not always in enviable ways. All part of the improbable adventure of being alive, of being a brainy biped with giant dreams on a crazy blue planet.

I was a cocky kid, and I felt like I was an adult at, like, 9. I think that's because my parents always treated me as an adult.

Some people, they get down in a hole so deep they can't figure out what to hold on to.

Troubles are a blessing that force you to change, to believe.

As long as you are lucky, you will have many friends; if cloudy times appear, you will be alone. -Donec eris felix, multos numerabis amicos; tempora si fuerint nubila, solus eris

A library of wisdom, then, is more precious than all wealth, and all things that are desirable cannot be compared to it.

Sir, you must not neglect doing a thing immediately good from fear of remote evil; - from fear of its being abused.