Fame is something which must be won honour is something which must not be lost.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.

The majority of men... are not capable of thinking, but only of believing, and... are not accessible to reason, but only to authority.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

Man is the only animal who causes pain to others with no other object than wanting to do so.

Genius and madness have something in common: both live in a world that is different from that which exists for everyone else.

A pessimist is an optimist in full possession of the facts.

Religions are like fireflies. They require darkness in order to shine.

Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.

Myth: US housing market is in recovery. Fact: Big banks have been hiding their bloated home inventory, seized by virtue of home foreclosures.

The ecclesiastical system of Rome, and particularly its leaders, for a thousand years and more thought that the earth is fixed and that everything else revolves about it.

My first book was the most successful debut novel in the UK ever and every one of my books has reached number one in the UK. Clearly the British know brilliance when they see it.

Let the villages of the future live in our imagination, so that we might one day come to live in them!

I'm instinctively a Conservative.

Guardian angels guide the steps of idiots.

Worry about staying alive first. Then worry about how you're going to live.

I'm not blind to the fact that we have to do a better job with our relationships between the community and police.

It's very difficult to make a living in music these days. All it takes is somebody paying.

I always think it's far more admirable to confuse people than it is to reassure them.