Life is the enjoyment of emotion, derived from the past and aimed at the future.

No one who achieves success does so without acknowledging the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude.

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.

If a dog jumps into your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.

There are no whole truths: All truths are half-truths.

Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.

Religion is the last refuge of human savagery.

Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.

...the self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of existing modes of knowledge.

Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows.

Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneration: it is inherent in the very texture of human life.

I never did give them hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell.

That’s what’s new. There used to be the option of opting out. But now that’s over. Completion is the end. We’re closing the circle around everyone—it’s a totalitarian nightmare.

It's incredible how one song or even one little phrase or just a few notes, if you really concentrate on it, can be a kaleidoscope of possibility.

Wait a minute. I don't need to keep proving myself. I don't need to keep showing up at every party.

Has one hostage from Lebanon come back with a photograph of his abductors? Has any hostage ever come back with a photograph of his abductors smiling? I mean, this was so incredible!

I'm not a 25-interception quarterback, I know that.

One sits down first; one thinks afterwards.

We are what we are because we have been what we have been.

It's a national concern, I mean how we dispose of nuclear waste in a safe way, how we deal with this incredible amount of nuclear waste we have created over the years.

What we love usually manages to get into our conversation. What is down in the well of the heart will come up in the bucket of the speech.