If men were ever to lose the appetite for meaning we call thinking, they would lose the capacity for asking all the unanswerable questions upon which every civilization is founded.

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.

When evil is allowed to compete with good, evil has an emotional populist appeal that wins out unless good men and women stand as a vanguard against abuse.

Politically, the weakness of the argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.

This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes.

The greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.

One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.

There is a strange interdependence between thoughtlessness and evil.

Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.

There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.

Only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.

My happiness has to come from within myself or it is too fragile a thing to be of any use to me and too much of a burden to benefit any of my loved ones.

Do not feed children on maudlin sentimentalism or dogmatic religion

When it's all said and done remember, "You are only as old as you look.

The love that comes from friendship is the underlying facet of a happy life.

Sooner or later, we sell out for money.

Parents are indeed capable of routinely torturing their children without anyone interceding.

We have a movement going on, folks. I will never let you down.

If government goes beyond securing liberty and instead violates it through regulation, redistribution, and planning, then citizens are victims of legal plunder.

I always knew that I wanted to be a writer. I think I was six or seven when I learned how to read, and I still remember it.

The moon was a sharply defined crescent and the sky was perfectly clear. The stars shone with such fierce, contained brilliance that it seemed absurd to call the night dark.