Men think they may justly do that for which they have a precedent.

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.

I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office."(Washington DC, 12 May, 2008)

But an artist, he realized. Or rather so-called artist. Bohemian. That's closer to it. The artistic life without the talent.

I've generally got low levels of embarrassment.

I'm a pretty intense person. And I don't know if intense is fun. I put myself through the wringer. That's just how I work.

Ten years from now I plan to be sitting here, looking out over my land. I hope I'll be writing books, but if not, I'll be on my pond fishing with my kids. I feel like the luckiest guy I know.

You can only see one thing clearly, and that is your goal. Form a mental vision of that, and cling to it through thick and thin.

Theory is the essence of facts. Without theory scientific knowledge would be only worthy of the madhouse.

The writer is an explorer. Every step is an advance into a new land.

Natural selection is all about the differential success of rival DNA in getting itself transmitted vertically in the species archives.