Each living art object, taken out of its native habitat so we can conveniently gaze at it, is like an animal in a zoo. Something about it has died in the removal.

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.

The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes 'sight-seeing.'

Human models are more vivid and more persuasive than explicit moral commands.

The courage to imagine the otherwise is our greatest resource, adding color and suspense to all our life.

Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be.

I write to discover what I think.

Knowledge is not simply another commodity. On the contrary. Knowledge is never used up. It increases by diffusion and grows by dispersion.

Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge.

We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in their place.

Wealth and poverty do not lie in a man's estate, but in men's souls.

Writing humor in my column isn't as dangerous as performing it. If I fail in front of a live audience, the humiliation is as great as anything a human being can suffer.

Too much shine, can dull the soul

I prefer to believe that people are good and honest and respect me enough to tell me the truth. It's not easy to find those people all the time, but they're out there.

And, since they are theater people, they are all talking. All of them. Simultaneously. They do not need to be heard; they only need to be speaking.

The stock exchange is a poor substitute for the Holy Grail.

One knows quite well that harmony can be a harmony of appearances.

And so in my mind's eye these coastal forms merge and blend in a shifting, kaleidoscopic pattern in which there is no finality, no ultimate and fixed reality - earth becoming fluid as the sea itself.

I've never really liked the Yanks. ... You can't trust people who pick up the ball all the time when they play football.

Senegal needs to free itself, to rediscover its democracy.