Men endured so much for war, but for peace they dared nothing.

The universe now appeared to me as a void wherein floated rare flakes of snow, each flake a universe.

We have no government and no laws, if by law is meant a stereotyped convention supported by force, and not to be altered without the aid of cumbersome machinery.

A nation . . . is just a society for hating foreigners.

Even when all the worlds have frozen or exploded, and all the suns gone dead and cold, there'll still be time. Oh, God, what for?

The expansion of the whole cosmos was but the shrinkage of all its physical units and of the wavelengths of light.

In you, humanity is precarious; and so, in dread and in shame, you kill the animal in you. And its slaughter poisons you.

No visiting angel, or explorer from another planet, could have guessed that this bland orb [Earth] teemed with vermin, with world-mastering, self-torturing, incipiently angelic beasts.

The creator, if he should love his creature, would be loving only a part of himself; but the creature, praising the creator, praises an infinity beyond himself.

In fact man's career has been less like a mountain torrent hurtling from rock to rock, than a great sluggish river, broken very seldom by rapids.

It is better to be destroyed than to triumph in slaying the spirit... We die praising the universe in which at least such an achievement as ours can be.

Pleasure and business, unlike oil and water, can sometimes be mixed.

A good student learns from his teacher. A great student learns to teach himself.

Christ--the quickest way to send a bloke mad is to let him go on re-fighting his war till he gets it right.

Truth is much like fire. Hard to understand, ever-changing.

If I can learn to understand this language without words, I can learn to understand the world.

Mine first --mine last-- mine even in the grave!

Too often we shape our public positions on the basis of our economic connections. That brings us dangerously close to economic determinism.

Being a man is the continuing battle for one's life. One loses a bit of manhood with every stale compromise to the authority of any power in which one does not believe.

I'd rather call myself a mischief-maker, an imp, rather than a satirist. Satirist sounds so self important. Plus no one is calling himself an imp right now. It makes me feel special.

Just think of yourself as starting from zero every time. That's what I do with every new role. I'm at zero, and I'm going to do the work.