Powder is but a thing of yesterday, and war is as old as the human race--unhappily.

We were alone. Where, I could not say, hardly imagine. All was black, and such a dense black that, after some minutes, my eyes had not been able to discern even the faintest glimmer.

Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.

There are no impossible obstacles; there are just stronger and weaker wills, that’s all!

Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real.

He believed in it, as certain good women believe in the leviathan-by faith, not by reason.

How many things have been denied one day, only to become realities the next!

The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides.

Anything you can imagine you can make real.

All that is impossible remains to be accomplished.

We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.

You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.

Everybody has a gun in their car in Detroit.

You can't really control what people think. You can't really worry about what they think, and attitude is really the one to have.

Another older writer that had a huge influence on me is Chekhov. More contemporarily, it's hard to say.

In America, we will have a government of, by and for the people.

I wondered, "Why have I been chasing happiness my whole life when bliss was here the entire time?

Someone has said the best nursing home is the U.S. Senate.

It is unhappily true that much insincere Literature and Art, executed solely with a view to effect, does succeed by deceiving the public.

The neutralizer to fear is self belief.

When wrong people leave your life, wrong things stop happening