God must hate common people, because he made them so common.

Material blessings, when they pay beyond the category of need, are weirdly fruitful of headache.

One good teacher in a lifetime may sometimes change a delinquent into a solid citizen.

If liberty has any meaning it means freedom to improve.

Ignorance is not bliss — it is oblivion. Determined ignorance is the hastiest kind of oblivion.

The first gold star a child gets in school for the mere performance of a needful task is its first lesson in graft.

Superiority and inferiority are individual, not racial or national.

Education is not a function of any church or even of a city or a state; it is a function of all mankind.

Man's destiny lies half within himself, half without. To advance in either half at the expense of the other is literally insane.

Common man has at long last got himself so far out of gear with nature and his environment that he is beginning to see the shape of extinction, whether he recognizes it as such or not.

The businessmen have corrupted liberty by trying to propose it as a material quality.

Whether you call the principle of existence "God," "matter," "energy," or anything else you like, you have created nothing; you have merely changed a symbol. Eastern and Western Thinking, 1938

Venus can see at night without eyes.

Shooting at night in Los Angeles is amazing. The city shuts down at 10 P.M. every night, and a whole different cast of characters comes out.

I don't think I have grand visions that I will never achieve.

I labored for eight years thinking that I was writing a book for adults that was a nostalgic look back on childhood. Then my publisher informed me I'd written a children's book.

It was like pulling teeth trying to get me to L.A. I hated it for so long, but now I've got this great life here.

To serve Mary and to be her courtier is the greatest honor we can possibly possess; for to serve the Queen of Heaven is already to reign there; and to live under her command is more than to govern.

I have a sense of greatness, which comes from feeling that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing on the planet - empowering people, especially women.

I find comedy to be one of the highest of the art forms.

I don't like a tremendous amount of conflict. I don't think that fighting and passion are the same thing.