Euphemisms persist because lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.

Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.

Authors are magpies, echoing each other's words and seizing avidly on anything that glitters.

The mere abhorrence of vice is not a virtue at all.

The civilized man has a moral obligation to be skeptical, to demand the credentials of all statements that claim to be facts.

Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.

That is the essence of a witch-hunt, that any questioning of the evidence or the procedures in itself constitutes proof of complicity.

An honorable man will not be bullied by a hypothesis.

There is no necessary connection between the desire to lead and the ability to lead, and even less the ability to lead somewhere that will be to the advantage of the led.

Leadership is more likely to be assumed by the aggressive than by the able, and those who scramble to the top are more often motivated by their own inner torments.

Words are one of our chief means of adjusting to all the situations of life. The better control we have over words, the more successful our adjustment is likely to be.

In knowledge there is strength, in understanding there is might, and in wisdom there is power.

My heart is broken and I grieve, for I have known love. Your heart is broken and you grieve, for you have not.

You are not suffering yesterday or tomorrow. You are only suffering your memory and your imagination.

The pale child, Eve, leading her mother, Night.

For men are made for happiness, and any one who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.'

Time is, time was, but time shall be no more.

Shall I call the others back in?" He nodded. "Why ask me? It's all of you who are making the decisions.

So much of life was the peeling away of illusions.

What tries to break us is endlessly fascinating to me. Joy is a whole different game to express.

Late, by myself, in the boat of myself, no light and no land anywhere, cloudcover thick. I try to stay just above the surface, yet I'm already under and living within the ocean.