The moral difference between a soldier and a civilian is that the soldier accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body politic of which he is a member. The civilian does not.

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

Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.

I never learned from a man who agreed with me.

A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future.

Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events.

May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.

Love is the spirit of the soul.

Reading books would be boring if you lack imagination...

It is only in the world of objects that we have time and space and selves.

Rational order in the technological world can be as fascinating as the fetishes of a Congo witch-doctor - scientific phenomena become significant images.

I put down these memorandums of my affections in honor of tenderness, in honor of all of those who have been conscripted into the brotherhood of loss.

I think Georges Feydeau said comedy is just tragedy speeded up.

I write songs now I look at my strengths and I start there. In The Walkmen, we'd start with the live stuff.

A pathetic shadow, torn between her envy and thrill of being seen with Masomma, sharing in the attention as a weed would, lapping up water meant for the lily upstream.

An awakened people who rely upon their nonviolent strength are independent in the face of any conceivable combination of the armed powers.

I thought you were supposed to be pretending I don’t exist, not irritating me to death.