(Politeness is) a tacit agreement that people's miserable defects whether moral or intellectual shall on either side be ignored and not be made the subject of reproach.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.

The majority of men... are not capable of thinking, but only of believing, and... are not accessible to reason, but only to authority.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

Man is the only animal who causes pain to others with no other object than wanting to do so.

Genius and madness have something in common: both live in a world that is different from that which exists for everyone else.

A pessimist is an optimist in full possession of the facts.

Religions are like fireflies. They require darkness in order to shine.

Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.

At the W.M. Keck Observatory on the very high altitude summit of Mauna Kea, there was no routine monitoring of mental functioning, blood oxygen levels, blood pressure or heart rate of workers.

Environmental radiation research is the rent I pay for living on this planet.

The onion is the truffle of the poor.

Beauty can come from the strangest of places, even the most disgusting of places.

Soldiers and peasants lived together on friendly terms; they knew each other and their everyday routines, and trusted each other; they shook their heads together over the war.

I pick up my guitar and play. Something might come, and then the pen comes out. Then an edit, until something comes out that you're actually satisfied with.

Isn't it a little racist to call it Black Friday?

I may have said the same thing before... but my explanation, I am sure, will always be different.

I dont know what it is about the open road that makes it so appealing. Maybe its because when youre headed somewhere, you dont have to be where youve already been.

The last thing in the world that I would want to know, in my own life, is when I'm going to pass away.