There is wisdom in the selection of wisdom.

Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.

Authors are magpies, echoing each other's words and seizing avidly on anything that glitters.

The mere abhorrence of vice is not a virtue at all.

The civilized man has a moral obligation to be skeptical, to demand the credentials of all statements that claim to be facts.

Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.

That is the essence of a witch-hunt, that any questioning of the evidence or the procedures in itself constitutes proof of complicity.

An honorable man will not be bullied by a hypothesis.

There is no necessary connection between the desire to lead and the ability to lead, and even less the ability to lead somewhere that will be to the advantage of the led.

Leadership is more likely to be assumed by the aggressive than by the able, and those who scramble to the top are more often motivated by their own inner torments.

Words are one of our chief means of adjusting to all the situations of life. The better control we have over words, the more successful our adjustment is likely to be.

Education is a system. Learning is an ongoing every day process.

In France, older women are considered sensual, and they don't have to mask the lines and wrinkles and erase every sign of their life on earth to be attractive and get laid.

What has destroyed every previous civilization has been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth and power.

Our happiness often depends upon social hypocrisies to which we will never stoop.

Right now, America is under the gun. It's being tested and is being co-opted in a big way.

Our nation is turning into an idiocracy.

Fear . . . is forward. No one is afraid of yesterday.

In 1923 there were no government benefits for immigrants except one: Freedom!

I don’t want to be perfect. I want to be useful, I want to be good, and I want to sound like myself. Trying to be perfect gets in the way of all three.

I enjoy being recognized whatever environment I'm in.