The easiest way to be inscrutable is to be completely straightforward and honest. Then no one will be able to figure out what you’re up to.

Don't waste time making enemies. As long as you're active, you'll have plenty.

It is hard for people to think clearly because their emotional needs keep getting in the way. The trick is to make thinking clearly an emotional need.

People who believe that justice is a pendulum are willing to swing it wildly.

Darwinian evolution has obviously not had enough time to work.

Revolutionary behavior and violence are usually only indulged in when people are at their wits’ end. So social stability depends a lot on how long their wits are.

Even if God had created us, He would never have admitted it.

Laws should act as the lower limits of acceptable behavior, not as a guide to noble action.

One of the great things about anarchy is that it’s hard to get it organized.

Resorting to lying or cheating in any competition amounts to conceding defeat.

It's like I'm thirteen again and he's my crush. All I'm aware of in this entire roomful of people is him. Where he is, what he's doing, who he's talking to.

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities.

As for my next book I am going to hold myself from writing it till I have it impending in me: grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear pendant gravid asking to be cut or it will fall.

And I argued with that intelligence estimate and I think it is a responsibility of policymakers to use their best judgment on the basis of the intelligence they've received.

I guess that's one of the things about growing up in the fifties - it never occurred to me that you wouldn't be at least as successful as your parents.

Reserve your abuse for your true friends.

The city does not take away, neither does the country give, solitude; solitude is within us.

If a grasshopper tries to fight a lawnmower, one may admire his courage but not his judgement.

There is a difference between running with all your heart with your eyes closed and running with all your heart with your eyes wide open.

The spirit of adventure to embrace the new and the incredible belief in the power of invention attracted me to the Russian avant-garde.