It is fortune, not wisdom, that rules man's life.

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.

He burst into the house and ate Grandma, an entirely valid course of action for a carnivore such as himself.

Audible at five miles painful at three and lethal at one.

As we go from Abraham Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt to Mitt Romney, I now understand why the Republicans don't believe in evolution.

If you must be a glutton, be a glutton for work.

Russia's most precious resource is the brain power of this country. And you've got a lot of it. It's going to take a lot of brains in Russia to create a drain.

Trying to write music, be in a band and keep it all happening is one of the hardest, morale-destroying, heartbreaking things you will ever try to do - and that's when it's going well.

When there is official censorship it is a sign that speech is serious. Where there is none, it is pretty certain that the official spokesmen have all the loud-speakers.

With 'The Office' and 'Extras' I've always snuck in a little bit of heart and pathos - and drama, which is fun.

That which destroys the old mythos becomes the new mythos.

Burning fossil fuels has given us the gift of seeing ourselves in new ways. But that very gift now enables us to see we've got to change our ways.