The Intellect engages us in the pursuit of Truth. The Passions impel us to Action.

Politicians are not born; they are excreted.

Poor is the nation that has no heroes, but poorer still is the nation that having heroes, fails to remember and honor them.

It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own.

Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goest out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead.

We learn nothing from history except that we learn nothing from history.

It is not enough to acquire wisdom, it is necessary to employ it.

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.

Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

Literature is fighting for its very life because compromise is mistook for ambition, and joining up is preferred to standing out …

They all went indoors with their new friends, and found rooms so small as none but those who invite from the heart could think capable of accommodating so many.

Sometimes I scare myself with how quickly I can come up with lies.

Genius is the ability to renew one's emotions in daily experience.

It makes no sense to bad mouth people, but I think Jean-Luc Godard is astonishing as a survivalist, somebody who can do a film that is as extraordinary as Goodbye to Language.

An island of surety in a changing world.

Oh, it makes a difference, I thought. And if it doesn't make a difference you will make it make a difference.

Science lives only in quiet places, and with odd people, mostly poor.

God demands nothing less than self - surrender as the price for the only real freedom that is worth having.

I'm the guy in the crowd making fun of the hero's shirt.