Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own.

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.

It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas.

Since I was a kid, every Thanksgiving growing up in New York, we always watched 'The March of the Wooden Soldiers' by Laurel and Hardy. Never miss it.

Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down. And this is all that life really means.

And, of course, you have the commercials where savvy businesspeople get ahead by using their MacIntosh computers to create the ultimate American business product: a really sharp-looking report.

The goal for me is to have one track just flow into the next one and you can just get lost in it. I try to find that fluidity.

I usually have a title in mind before I start.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the radiant sun, Is Nature's eye.

You don't always win your battles, but it's good to know you fought.

I find my familiarity with thee has bred contempt.

The only authority I respect is the one that causes butterflies to fly south in fall and north in springtime.