I do not wish to die: but I care not if I were dead. [Lat., Emori nolo: sed me esse mortuum nihil aestimo.]

Politicians are not born; they are excreted.

Poor is the nation that has no heroes, but poorer still is the nation that having heroes, fails to remember and honor them.

It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own.

Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goest out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead.

We learn nothing from history except that we learn nothing from history.

It is not enough to acquire wisdom, it is necessary to employ it.

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.

Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

Those masks we wear not to shield others

It isn’t always true that a critical end justifies desperate means.

If you're still watching, write in and we'll send you a fiver each.

I am not very good with relationships. With anyone. I can't be locked up with anyone for too long.

I don't trust sentimentality in men; it goes with tyranny; you can't have one without the other.

The secret of Big Macs is that they're not very good, but every one is not very good in exactly the same way.

People always try to box you in to what they know you best for.

Every win, regardless a good or bad one, gives you more confidence.

By the sense of mystery I understand the experience of certain places and times when one's whole nature seems to be in touch with a presence, a genius loci, a potency.

[My poetry is] a way of coming to grips with reality . . . a way of discovery and definition. It is a way of solving for the unknowns.