Only Socrates knew, after a lifetime of unceasing labor, that he was ignorant. Now every high-school student knows that. How did it become so easy?

Education is the movement from darkness to light.

Reason cannot establish values, and its belief that it can is the stupidest and most pernicious illusion.

The liberally educated person is one who is able to resist the easy and preferred answers, not because he is obstinate but because he knows others worthy of consideration.

The artist is the most interesting of all phenomena, for he represents creativity, the definition of man.

The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency - the belief that the here and now is all there is.

Law may prescribe that the male nipples be made equal to the female ones, but they still will not give milk.

To recognize that some of the things our culture believes are not true imposes on us the duty of finding out which are true and which are not.

Once the law is broken with impunity, each man regains the right to any means he deems proper or necessary in order to defend himself against the new tyrant, the one who can break the law.

There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.

As soon as tradition has come to be recognized as tradition, it is dead.

NASA spent millions of dollars inventing the ball-point pen so they could write in space. The Russians took a pencil.

Resignation is what kills people. Once they've rejected resignation, humans gain the privilege of making humanity their footpath.

A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety.

Uh, I just had an operation last March which was rather serious and I'm recuperating now. I'm on a very bland diet. But, uh, I'm lucky, I was just lucky, that's all.

Do whatever you're directed to do, and leave the rest of that technical stuff up to the director.

It is the habit of mediocre minds to condemn all that is beyond their grasp.

I am my best self when I have super short hair. That’s when I feel most like me and most confidant.

Life is a choice... it's a choice to be successful.

All men come to resemble their fathers. That isn't a tragedy. But you need a hell of a sense of humor to handle it.

My Italian-American heritage, of which I'm very proud and with which I identify strongly, surfaces in several of my novels.