Man is a fraction of the animal world. Our history is an afterthought, no more, tacked to an infinite calendar. We are not so unique as we should like to believe.

Do you care about freedom? Dreams may have inspired it, and wishes prompted it, but only war and weapons have made it yours.

We are born of risen apes, not fallen angels.

Aggressiveness is the principal guarantor of survival.

We were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments?

What could not be denied was that in vast segments of the animal world natural selection of the most qualified individuals took place not by competition for females but by competition for space.

There is a virtue, I must presume, in shamelessness, since by placing on parade the things one does not know, one discovers that no one else knows either.

The dog barking at you from behind his master's fence acts for a motive indistinguishable from that of his master when the fence was built.

Human war has been the most successful of our cultural traditions.

The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses.

A bird does not fly because it has wings; it has wings because it flies.

Children, like God, see only our actions.

Fate’ and ‘coincidence’ are the mythological derivatives authored by those who refuse to see a ‘greater purpose’, because such a conclusion would naturally suggest a ‘Greater Being’.

In the ashes of adversity, lies opportunity.

You know you're rich when you have to drive for a half hour to get to your house once you're on your property.

Any attempts at autobiography before the age of eighty seem pretty self-involved to me. There are a lot of smart middle aged people but not many wise ones.

Liberal of cruelty are those who pamper with promises; promisers destroy while they deceive, and the hope they raise is dearly purchased by the dependence that is sequent to disappointment.

We want to follow a dream, yes it's true, but it's one thing to follow a dream and another to follow an obsession...A dream is more pure than obsession. A dream is about pride.

A sapling must be hedged about for protection, but when it becomes a tree, a hedge would be a hindrance. So there is no need to criticise and condemn the old forms.

It was the wish of the Americans that their red brethren should remain peacefully round their own fires, and not embroil themselves in any disputes between the white people.