Dying can't be all that difficult-up to now everyone has managed to do it.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.

Khomeini has offered us the opportunity to regain our frail religion ... faith in the power of words.

There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.

Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.

America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.

I was thinking that surgeons had to be the happiest people on earth. To cut people up and get paid for it-that's happiness, I told myself.

Love asks us that we be a little braver than is comfortable, a little more generous, a little more flexible. It means living on the edge more than we care to.

Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.

We are born free.

I am flagrantly nuts. I can say this because I am a doctor and I know about these things.

The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider's job is to serve the elephant.

Make your customers comfortable and they will give you their lives.

I've been dealing with the press for 45 years. You need a very long spoon to sup with them. While you are always grateful, they are like badly trained dogs. They smile and wag and bite your arm off.

Change is not a threat to your life, but an invitation to live.

Let gratitude be awakened; let humility be deepened; let love be quickened.

I describe myself as an indoor cat, because I'm a computer guy and I always have been.

In the future, there will be fewer but better Russians.

I don't want this life to end," said Alexander. "The good, the bad, the everything, the very old, to ever end.