Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.

The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.

One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.

Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

If there were only turnips and potatoes in the world, someone would complain that plants grow the wrong way.

Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.

To read means to borrow; to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts.

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

He who understands the wise is wise already.

Acceptance of what is. That is the shortest path to peace with yourself.

To live without an aim is to wander in a wilderness.

I have learnt from the politics of my great country, Nigeria that there is nothing wrong with the heads of states, but there is something wrong with the state of the heads.

I'd had a vaguely Jewish upbringing, but no deep connection to faith.

Human nature has a tendency to admire complexity but reward simplicity.

I think, is a cultural thing, too. You know, everyone wants to see the baby. Everybody's bringing gifts for the baby.

Young people should investigate where the filmmaker stands on the issue of file sharing, before they spend money on them at all.

I did do, well before Pop Art, all the cartoon characters as paintings.

I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all.

What I do think is evident is that those countries in the world where Islamic extremism has recovered the most power, those are also the countries which are most disliked.