The only man who really needs a tail coat is a man with a hole in his trousers.

Grades don't measure anything other than your relevant obedience to a manager.

There isn't a right way to become educated; there are as many ways as there are fingerprints.

You either learn your way towards writing your own script in life, or you unwittingly become an actor in someone else's script.

One of the first things a family tries to teach its children is the difference between good and evil, right and wrong. One of the first things our schools do is destroy that distinction.

The primary goal of real education is not to deliver facts but to guide students to the truths that will allow them to take responsibility for their lives.

Government schooling is the most radical adventure in history. It kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents.

You need experience, adventure, and explorations more than you need algebra!

Great power often corrupts virtue; it invariably renders vice more malignant. . . . In proportion as the powers of government increase, both its own character and that of the people becomes worse.

Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist.

Creative work and critical thought, which produces new knowledge, can't be conditioned; indeed, conditioning prevents these things from ever happening.

You should've mentioned you were bringing a beautiful woman. I would've combed my hair.

I love you, Vic! Anything else is lies. I really, truly love you. I’ll love you until the day I die.

Sometimes the autobiographical link in each story is very literal, like I did work at The Texas School for the Blind, and I did once lose a mattress out of the back of a friend's truck.

After inside upheavals, it is important to fix on imperturbable things. Their imperturbableness, their air that nothing has happened renews our guarantee.

I don't like the phrase shock value. Surprise is essential in comedy, and if people are shocked by what I consider merely surprising, then that's their shock. But there is no joke without surprise.

True beauty dwells on high: ours is a flame But borrowed thence to light us thither. Beauty and beauteous words should go together.

There is nothing assured to mortals.

People see me on TV two and three times a day, and see me cooking all these wonderfully Southern, fattening dishes. That's only 30 days out of 365. And it's for entertainment.

Without a love of humankind there is no love of God.

The universe couldn't care less about us. I say this very clearly in the film [ "Into the Inferno"]: our planet is "indifferent to scurrying roaches, retarded reptiles and vapid humans alike."