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

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.

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.

Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed.

Most people know nothing about learning

I could smell death in the air and I knew it was mine. I could see the world spinning around me and I could sense the blows being thrust into my body. I blacked out.

People often call fighting discrimination being 'PC' because they don't want their own unearned privileges challenged.

Maybe home is nothing but two arms holding you tight when you’re at your worst.

I've written some poetry I don't understand myself.

It is a negative sort of achievement, she thinks, to have spent a life warding something off.

Imagine no limitations; decide what's right and desirable before you decide what's possible.

(President Nixon,) in the face of a vote to impeach he might try, as "commander-in-chief", to use military forces to keep himself in power.

He is next to the gods whom reason, and not passion, impels; and who, after weighing the facts, can measure the punishment with discretion.

What do you do with a textbook case when no one's written the textbook?