Our Phoenician ancestors never left anything they undertook unfinished. Consider what they accomplished in their days, and the degree of culture they attained.

My first wish is to be simple in my actions, truthful in my speech, honest in my opinions, and natural in my behavior. In other words, I want to be clean in mind, heart, and body.

Truth breeds power, and truth never perishes.

Ignorance and fear are twins whose mother is slavery and whose father is oppression, and the mentality of the whole family is that of slaves.

I give priority to up-bringing over education because the ultimate goal of up-bringing is morals, and we have a more urgent need for morals than for knowledge.

The religious fanatic drew a small circle and left me, the infidel, outside it. However, I, with the help of love, won over him - I drew a large circle and included him.

The West for me means ambition, the East contentment. My heart is ever in one, my soul in the other.

Fire and light compete today in the East. But there is a lot of green firewood in this fire, and there is a lot of smoke in that light.

Self-reliance leads to intellectual independence. Each man must think for himself, must train the mind to think, must habituate the soul to observe and analyze.

Breathless and unharmed, we emerge from the mazes of metaphysics and psychology where man and the soul are playing hide-and-seek.

The heart yields spontaneity; the mind bends to understanding.

In ourselves our safety must be sought. By our own right hand it must be wrought.

Getting information from the internet is like getting a glass of water from the Niagara Falls.

I've always been a fan at home. That's the one joke I have with Sam [Champion]. "I've always loved you! I remember wanting to be you in grade school!"

I don't really start writing until later in the night. I'm a night owl.

If we are to achieve things never before accomplished we must employ methods never before attempted

The best of all things is something entirely outside your grasp: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second-best thing for you - is to die soon.

I supported to reduce oil consumption in California by 50 percent, 50 percent in the next 15 years. They didn't even bother to show up.

In certain savage tribes in New Guinea, they put the old people up in the trees and shake them once a year in the spring; if they don't fall out they let them live another year.

The very nature of limiting something from an infinite to moments in time creates distortion; analog recording methods create all kinds of distortion, they're just not digital distortion.

Writing is not a genteel profession. It's quite nasty and tough and kind of dirty.