It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.

We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.

That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.

Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.

When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.

You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday

The sight of you is good for sore eyes.

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.

I thought and pondered -- vainly. I felt that blank incapability of invention which is the greatest misery of authorship, when dull Nothing replies to our anxious invocations,

It's not worthy of human beings to give up.

I like Brando's acting ... and James Dean ... and Richard Widmark. Quite a few of 'em I like.

The best way to fight stupidity, is by ignoring it.

The best parts of any story to me are the unexpected things.

All our lives we are putting pennies — our most golden pennies — into penny-in-the-slot machines that are almost always empty.

There are some family traditions I don't want my children to carry on.

Knowledge without devotion will be like a misfire.

Because I'm little, I think the audience likes me.

Nobody can be rich and stupid for more than one generation.