Our civilization ... is not devaluing its awareness of the unknowable; nor is it deifying it. It is the first civilization that has severed it from religion and superstition. In order to question it.

What is Man? A miserable little pile of secrets.

To command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less.

Culture is the sum of all the forms of art, of love, and of thought, which, in the coarse or centuries, have enabled man to be less enslaved

Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk - and to act.

A political leader is necessarily an imposter since he believes in solving life's problems without asking its question.

The twenty-first century will be spiritual or it will not be.

I don't argue with my enemies; I explain to their children.

There's no such thing as a grown up person.

In the realm of human destiny, the depth of man's questionings is more important than his answers.

The first duty of a leader is to make himself be loved without courting love. To be loved without 'playing up' to anyone - even to himself.

Our memories are like a city: we tear some structures down, and we use the rubble of the old to raise up the new ones.

Healing the hurt is much harder than not hurting them at all.

El Sueno de la razon produce monstrous. (The sleep of reason breeds monsters)

I think it's interesting to have a cool character not look so cool, you know?

I don't know what the word is in Austrian.

Everybody has their own idea of what's a poet. Robert Frost, President Johnson, T.S.Eliot, Rudolf Valentino - they're all poets. I like to think of myself as the one who carries the light bulb.

If one were truly aware of the value of human life, to waste it blithely on distractions and the pursuit of vulgar ambitions would be the height of confusion.

I mean, I must confess I don't own Harry Potter DVDs. My parents do. They have them all. And they like watching them.

My life was a mystery even as I lived it.

What the hell could you do? I've never been arrested, I haven't taken drugs, I've had the same wife for 54 years; where's anything of interest to people?